Where's the plane?!
That's the question being asked at coffee shops and bars and dinner tables around the world.
See also: Malaysia Airlines Flight Officially Longest Disappearance in Modern Aviation
As we near the two-week mark since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished after its takeoff from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the investigation into the plane's disappearance has appeared to hit a brick wall.
A week of breaking developments that revealed a stunning number of facts — the transponders were deliberately turned off, the plane traveled for more than seven hours after its last contact with ground control — has given way to days of baseless speculation.
Among the leading theories: The plane was hijacked and either crashed into the sea or landed at some unknown runway, or it crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off the western shore of Australia.
Hishammuddin Hussein, the acting Malaysian Minister of Transport, spoke at an afternoon press briefing on Wednesday and said the focus of the international effort remains a search and rescue operation.
He addressed reports that the plane was spotted in the Maldives ("not true") and confirmed that all of the plane's passengers, crew and ground staff handling the aircraft were now under investigation. Officials at the press briefing also said that investigators were taking a closer look at Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's flight simulator, which was seized from his house earlier this week.
“The experts are looking at what are the logs, what has been cleared,” said Tan Sri Khalid Bin Abu Bakar, the inspector-general of the Malaysian police. They have enlisted the FBI's help in recovering the data.
"Local and international expertise has been recruited to examine the pilot’s flight simulator," the acting transportation minister said, adding that some of the data had been deleted from the simulator and forensic work to retrieve this data is on-going.
Meanwhile, experts are raising doubts over the "northern corridor" theory, which suggests the plane may have traveled along a route taking it across the Bay of Bengal, over India, through its border with Pakistan, and across Afghanistan — countries with "the most closely defended borders in the world," according to the New York Times.
It is difficult to get a complete picture of the radar capabilities of countries in the region because military officials are unwilling to disclose details of their air defense systems. But experts said that the military forces arrayed in the Asian interior, especially in China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, would not be likely to overlook or ignore unidentified aircraft.
This leaves the wide swath of the Indian Ocean as the likely landing place for the missing plane — not a good sign for those hoping its passengers will be found alive. It also means the race is on to find the "black box," which has just 30 days of battery power.
"We will persevere," Hussein said, concluding his remarks. "Our immediate focus is the search and rescue operation. We are pursuing every means possible to narrow the two search corridors."
Relatives of the missing passengers appear to be growing impatient with the slow progress in the hunt for the missing plane. They announced Tuesday that some would be going on a hunger strike to protest a lack of information, and on Wednesday, a group stormed the press briefing room and unfurled a banner demanding that the government “tell the truth.” Wailing and screaming, they were forcefully removed from the room.
It was a chaotic scene.


A Twitter account associated with the transportation minister’s office later tweeted, “We regret the scenes at this afternoon’s press conference, involving some of the relatives of passengers on board. One can only imagine the anguish they are going through. [Malaysia] is doing everything in its power to find #MH370 and hopefully bring some degree of closure for those whose family members are missing.”
It then added: “I have ordered an immediate inquiry into the events in the press room today.”
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