Aviation officials in India and Central Asia as well as Taliban militants said they knew nothing about the whereabouts of a missing Malaysian jetliner on Monday after the search for Flight MH370 extended into their territory. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8 about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard and investigators are now increasingly convinced it was diverted thousands of miles off course.
Malaysia said it had sent diplomatic notes to all countries along an arc of northern and southern search corridors including India and Pakistan, requesting radar and satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations. Indian defence officials rejected the possibility of a plane flying for hours above the country undetected. "The idea that the plane flew through Indian airspace for several hours without anyone noticing is bizarre," a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"These are wild reports, without any basis," he said, adding a pilot would have to know the precise location of all Indian radars and surveillance systems to be able to get around them. Explaining why this was unlikely, he said surveillance was so tight on India's border facing its rival Pakistan that the air force scrambled a pair of Sukhoi fighters last month after an unidentified object showed up on the radar. It turned out to be a weather balloon drifting towards the Pakistan border.