Final satellite communication with the Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing came more than six-and-a-half hours after it vanished from civilian radar at 1:30am on March 8, Prime Minister Najib Razak told a nationally televised press conference.
The movement of the plane in the interim period, during which it changed direction and passed back over the Malaysian peninsula towards the Indian Ocean, was "consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," Najib said.
"Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear: we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path," he added.
Najib said his announcement was based on new information from satellite contact with the plane and military radar data.
The combined data suggested "with a high degree of certainty" that the plane's two automated communications systems -- Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and its transponder -- were "switched off" one after the other before it reached the point over the South China Sea where it dropped out of civilian radar contact.
It then turned back and flew in a westerly direction back over peninsular Malaysia before turning northwest.
The last confirmed communication between the plane and satellite was at 8:11 am, Najib said, adding that investigators were calculating how far the aircraft may have flown afterwards.
So far, experts had located the last point of communication as being inside one of two large geographical corridors: a northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and a southern corridor stretching from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean.
"This new satellite information has a significant impact on the nature and scope of the search operation," the prime minister said.
"We are ending our operations in the South China Sea and reassessing the redeployment of our assets. We are working with the relevant countries to request all information relevant to the search, including radar data," he added.
Indian Navy finds nothing... yet
Indian Navy ships supported by surveillance planes and helicopters are scouring Andaman Sea islands for a third day without any success in finding evidence of a missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
VSR Murthy, a top Indian coast guard official, says the search has been expanded farther west into the Bay of Bengal on Saturday. Nearly a dozen ships, patrol vessels, surveillance aircraft and helicopters have been deployed but Murthy says, "We have got nothing so far."
Seeing no headway, Malaysian authorities suggested Friday a new search area of 9,000 square kilometers (3,474 square miles) to India along the Chennai coast in the Bay of Bengal, India's Defence
Ministry said in a statement.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 hundreds of miles off course, a source familiar with official US assessments said on Friday.
The source, who is familiar with data the US 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.
Pilot turned plane
Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, the official cited Malaysian military radar data that investigators believe indicate the Boeing 777 may have radically changed course and headed northwest towards the Indian Ocean.
"It has to be a skilled, competent and a current pilot," the official said.
"He knew how to avoid the civilian radar. He appears to have studied how to avoid it."
The intended flight path for the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight was to be north over the South China Sea and Vietnam.
The new information, coupled with multiple corroborative but unconfirmed reports, suggests the investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was increasingly focusing on something going wrong in the cockpit.
Analysts have said that could include a sudden loss of cabin pressure or other mechanical event that incapacitated the pilots, catastrophic pilot error, or more sinister possibilities such as the plane being commandeered by a hijacker or rogue member of the flight crew, or pilot suicide.
All signs so far point to a "controlled, deliberate act, not a mechanical failure", said Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aviation consultancy Leeham Co.
The mounting reports of an unexplained banking to the west have coincided with a shift of search and rescue resources toward the Indian Ocean.
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