#MH370 - What happened? Your theories?DT notepg17 - Page 45

A Malaysian government official says investigators have concluded the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was hijacked.

The official said no motive has been established and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, but he said hijacking was "conclusive".

Malaysia's prime minister is due to give a news conference at around 0500gmt.

Earlier this morning, a source close to the investigation said satellite pulses picked up from flight MH370 show it may have been flying off-course for several hours before running out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.

Analysis of military radar tracking and pulses detected by satellites has provided two different theories as to what may have happened to Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the unnamed source said.

The electronic signals are believed to have been transmitted for up to five hours after ground control lost contact with the aircraft, according to Sky sources.

The signals are 'pings' sent by the plane to confirm it is still there and to allow the network to determine its position.

Sky correspondent Niall Paterson said: "If this information is accurate, for those five hours at the very least, that flight was not crashed, it was in some sense flying through the air."

The source close to the investigation said the most likely possibility is that after travelling northwest, the Boeing 777 made a sharp turn to the south, over the Indian Ocean where officials think, based on the data, it flew until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

The other interpretation is that Flight MH370 continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory.

But the source said it was believed unlikely that the plane flew for any length of time over India because that country has strong air defence and radar coverage and that should have allowed authorities there to see the plane.

Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein has confirmed the search had been expanded into the Indian Ocean - on the opposite side of Malaysia from where contact with the jet was lost nearly a week ago.

He also said there was evidence of a plane turning back, but it may not have been the missing flight.

There has been no sight of flight MH-370 or the 239 people on board since contact was lost with it last Saturday.

EILEEN NG and JOAN LOWY - 26 minutes ago

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - 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 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 authorized 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.

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Lowry reported from Washington.