Claims today that the missing
Malaysian Airlines jet dropped to an altitude of 5,000ft to avoid radar
lends credibility to reports by villagers that they saw bright lights
and loud noises at about the time the aircraft is thought to have made a
'U-turn'.
Investigators
told a Malaysian newspaper that the Boeing 777 had dropped to a lower
altitude to avoid ground radar, using the surrounding terrain as a sonar
barrier.
This type of
flying is considered to be dangerous and risky, because it places
tremendous pressure on the frame of the aircraft - and flying low at
night without radar assistance could lead to the plane crashing into
trees or mountains.
Investigators told the New Straits
Times that they were now convinced the aircraft flow low over Kelantan,
which is in the north east - exactly the same area where the villagers
and fishermen who saw bright lights in the sky on the night the jet
vanished are living.
At
least nine people - fishermen, farmers and villagers - have made reports
to police about seeing lights in the sky and some said they heard the
loud noise of an engine.
These
accounts appear to match the conclusions of investigators who say the
jet flew low after making a sharp turn and heading west from its course
over the South China Sea.
The
first report of a 'bright light descending at high speed' came from
Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi, 29, who said he saw the light heading towards the
South China Sea at 1.45am on the night the aircraft disappeared.
The businessman
lives in Kampung Kadok, in the far north west of the Malaysian
mainland, close to the southern border of Thailand - and the light he
witnessed would have been several miles to the north of the flight path
the jet was on before it vanished.
Lending
credibility to the account by Mr Alif is the claim by fisherman Azid
Ibrahim, 55, who saw a bright light streaking overhead at 1.30am on
Saturday, about 100 miles south of where Mr Alif had seen the light.
Mr
Alif told the New Straits Times that the bright light was the type that
aircraft use when taking off and landing at night - like a car uses its
headlights.
'I was walking
towards the rear of my house when I saw the light, and wondered where it
was heading to,' he said. 'The airspace here is like a highway for
aircraft and they usually travel in routine patterns.
'However,
the light I saw was moving towards a completely different direction. It
was going towards the sea, near Bachok (which lies to the south of Mr
Alif's home).'
His
description tends to indicate that if the light he saw was on the doomed
aircraft, it had turned north instead of continuing on its regular
north-easterly flight path.
Mr
Alif said the aircraft he usually sees fly across the sky for as far as
his eyes could see but the light he saw in the early hours of Saturday vanished from view behind a line of coconut trees.
While
he thought nothing of it at the time, when he learned about the missing
aircraft MH370 the following day he lodged a report with police.
Mr
Alif's account tended to coincide with that of fisherman Mr Azid who
told the New Straits Times: 'Usually, lights from an airplane look like
distant stars at night but the one that I saw was big, as the aircraft
was flying below the clouds.
'I followed the light for about five minutes before it disappeared.'
Meanwhile, researchers from Slade.com have pinpointed 634 runways where the place could have landed in the vast area now being searched.
