Missing Malaysian jet LIVE updates: Investigators conclude flight hijacked

Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said on Saturday. No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive," he said. He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar. The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital. Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy." While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe. The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board. Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999. A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting.

It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean. The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last know location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it. - AP Missing Malaysia plane may have flown thousands of miles, shows satellite data Analysis of electronic pulses picked up from a missing Malaysian airliner shows it could have run out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean after it flew thousands of miles off course, a source familiar with official U.S. assessments said on Friday. The source, who is familiar with data the U.S. government is receiving from the investigation into the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane, said the other, less likely possibility was that it flew on towards India.

The data obtained from pulses the plane sent to satellites had been interpreted to provide two different analyses because it was ambiguous, said the source, who declined to be identified because the investigation was continuing. But it offers the first real clues as to the fate of Flight MH370, which officials increasingly believe was deliberately diverted off its scheduled course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Boeing 777-200ER was carrying 239 people.

Two sources familiar with the probe earlier said Malaysian military radar data showed a plane that investigators suspect was Flight MH370 following a commonly used navigational route toward the Middle East and Europe when it was last spotted by radar early on March 8, northwest of Malaysia. The electronic pulses were believed to have been transmitted for several hours after the plane flew out of radar range, said the source familiar with the data.

The most likely possibility is that after travelling northwest, the airliner did a sharp turn to the south, into the Indian Ocean where officials think, based on the available data, it flew until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, added the source. The other interpretation from the pulses is that Flight MH370 continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory, said the source.

Satellite images on Chinese overnment website show suspected debris from missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner

Satellite images on a Chinese government website show suspected debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner floating off the southern tip of Vietnam, near the plane's original flight path, China's Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday. The revelation could provide searchers with a focus that has eluded them since the plane disappeared with 239 people aboard early Saturday.

The Xinhua report said the images from around 11 a.m. on Sunday appear to show "three suspected floating objects" of varying sizes, the largest about 24 meters (79 feet) by 22 meters (72 feet). China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) released three images of the debris, taken last week about 100 miles off the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. The report includes coordinates of a location in the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

The images originally were posted on a national defenCe technology website. No other governments have confirmed the Xinhua report, which did not say when Chinese officials became aware of the images and associated them with the missing plane. With the passage of time since the satellite images were taken, it is far from certain that whatever they show would be in the same location now. The search for the plane, which left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing before disappearing early Saturday, has encompassed 35,800 square miles of Southeast Asia and on Wednesday expanded toward India. Two-thirds of the passengers on the flight were Chinese, and the Chinese government has put increasing pressure on Malaysian officials to solve the mystery of the plane's disappearance.

Also, Wednesday, it was revealed that the last message from the cockpit of the missing flight was routine. "All right, good night," was the signoff transmitted to air traffic controllers five days ago. Then the Boeing 777 vanished as it cruised over the South China Sea toward Vietnam, and nothing has been seen or heard of the jetliner since. Those final words were picked up by controllers and relayed in Beijing to anguished relatives of some of the people aboard Flight MH370. The new Chinese reports of the satellite images came after several days of sometimes confusing and conflicting statements from Malaysian officials. Earlier Wednesday, the Malaysian military officially disclosed why it was searching on both sides of country: A review of military radar records showed what might have been the plane turning back and crossing westward into the Strait of Malacca.

That would conflict with the latest images on the Chinese website. For now, authorities said the international search effort would stay focused on the South China Sea and the strait leading toward the Andaman Sea. Chinese impatience has grown. "There's too much information and confusion right now. It is very hard for us to decide whether a given piece of information is accurate," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing. "We will not give it up as long as there's still a shred of hope." "We have nothing to hide," said Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. "There is only confusion if you want to see confusion." Flight MH370 disappeared from civilian radar screens at 1:30 a.m.

Saturday at an altitude of about 35,000 feet above the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and southern Vietnam. It sent no distress signals or any indication it was experiencing problems. The amount of time needed to find aircraft that go down over the ocean can vary widely. Planes that crash into relatively shallow areas, like the waters off Vietnam where the Malaysian jet is missing, are far easier to locate and recover than those that plunge deep into undersea canyons or mountain ranges. By contrast, much of the Gulf of Thailand is less than 300 feet (91 meters) deep.

The Malaysian government said it had asked India to join in the search near the Andaman Sea, suggesting the jetliner might have reached those waters after crossing into the Strait of Malacca, some 400 kilometers from the flight's last-known coordinates. Malaysian officials met in Beijing with several hundred Chinese relatives of passengers to explain the search and investigation, and to relay the last transmission that Malaysian air traffic controllers received before the plane entered Vietnamese airspace, according to a participant in the meeting. Aviation officials in Vietnam said they never heard from the plane.