马空军司令：马航客机或曾空中折返_BEC初级作文

马空军司令：马航客机或曾空中折返

Investigators will need access to the flight data recorders to determine what happened.

Some aviation and terrorism experts said revelations about stolen passports would strengthen speculation of foul play even as they also acknowledged other scenarios: a catastrophic failure of the engines or structure of the plane, extreme turbulence or pilot error or even suicide were all possible.

Jason Middleton, the head of the Sydney-based University of New South Wales' School of Aviation, said terrorism or some other form of foul play seemed a likely explanation.

"You're looking at some highly unexpected thing, and the only ones people can think of are basically foul play, being either a bomb or some immediate incapacitating of the pilots by someone doing the wrong thing and that might lead to an airplane going straight into the ocean," Middleton said. "With two stolen passports (on board), you'd have to suspect that that's one of the likely options."

But Clive Williams, a counter-terrorism expert at Australia's Macquarie University and a former military intelligence officer, said he doubted the two stolen passports aboard the flight were related to the disaster. He said latest Interpol data showed there were 39 million lost or stolen passports reported as of Dec. 13, 2013.

"Any flight of that size in Asia would be carrying a couple of people with false passports," he said. "When you think about the number of passports that have been stolen or gone missing around the world ... it could be related, but it's probably not."