- .Officials confirmed missing plane was hijacked by one or several people
- .Could have turned off communication system and steered it off-course
- .Now believed plane could have flown for another seven hours
- .Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak refused to confirm the reports
- .Investigators working to establish motive and where plane was taken
- .Reports suggest home of one of the pilots is currently being searched
By WILLS ROBINSON and RICHARD SHEARS
Investigators say the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was hijacked, steered off-course and could have reached Pakistan.
A Malaysian government official said people with significant flying experience could have turned off the flight's communication devices.
The search operation has now been focused on two 'corridors', one which extends from north west from Thailand to the Kazakstan-Turkmenistan border and the other which opens out into the southern Indian Ocean.
The representative said that hijacking theory was now 'conclusive', and police are now believed to be searching the home of pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, in Kuala Lumpur.
While Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak refused to confirm that flight MH370 was taken over, he admitted 'deliberate action' on board the plane resulted in it changing course and losing connection with ground crews.
The plane's communication system was switched off as it headed west over the Malaysian seaboard and could have flown for another seven hours on its fuel reserves.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday refused to confirm reports the plane was 'hijacked'
The last known position of MH370 was pinpointed as it headed east over the Peninsular Malaysia. Rada pings then suggest the plane could have then taken two paths along 'corridors' which are currently being searched. The northern corridor extends from northern Thailand to the Kazakstan-Turkmenistan border, while the south extends from Indonesia into the southern Indian Ocean
Conclusion: Malaysian officials say flight MH370 could have been hijacked by one or several people with flying experience and deliberately diverted
It is not yet clear where the plane was taken, however Mr Razak said the most recent satellite data suggests the plane could have headed to one of two possible flight corridors.
The last radar contact was made along one of the corridors, seven hours and 31 minutes after take off, but the plane could have deviated further from these points.
The aircraft's fuel reserves mean it could have travelled as far as Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Australia in the other direction.
However, if it was diverted into the Indian Ocean, the task of the search teams becomes more difficult, as there are hundreds of uninhabited islands and the water reaches depths of around 23,000ft.
The maximum range of the Boeing 777-200ER is 7,725 nautical miles or 14,305 km.
It is not clear how much fuel the aircraft was carrying though it would have been enough to reach its scheduled destination, Beijing, a flight of five hours and 50 minutes, plus some reserve.
Experts have previously said that whoever disabled the plane's communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience.
Devastated: Kamariah Sharif, a relative of one of the missing passengers gets emotional before the announcement the plane was hijacked
Another relative gives a statement to the media following the press conference
Agony: It has been more than a week since relatives of the missing passengers received any concrete evidence concerning their whereabouts
US investigators have also not ruled out the possibility that the passengers are being held at an unknown location and suggest that faint 'pings' were being transmitted for several hours after the flight lost contact with the ground.
NASA has also joined the international search operation, analysing satellite data and images that have already been gathered.
Malaysian authorities and others are urgently investigating the two pilots and 10 crew members, along with the 227 passengers on board.
Probe: Police in Kuala Lumpur searched the home of Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, after news the plane was hijacked
Today, a police van with a large contingent of officers inside passed through a security gate at the entrance to the wealthy compound where father-of-three Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah lives with his wife Faisa.
Four plain clothed police officiers were also, reportedly seen at the home of the other pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27.
He is reported to have told Malaysian air traffic controllers 'Good Night', before the flight was handed over to Vietnamese officials.
Officers have parked outside the gate of his home in the upmarket suburb of the Malaysian capital throughout the week.
But today it is believed a team of search specialists have entered the house in a bid to see if he was involved in any foul play.
They did not emerge from the gate at the entrance to the compound until two hours later.
In the house he has set up a flight simulator which is understood to have interested police following up one line of investigation - that he had used the equipment to practice making his real-life Boeing 777 ‘invisible’ by turning off all communications.
Shah joined the airline in 1981 and has more than 18,000 flight hours.
His Facebook profile includes pictures of him flying remote-controlled aircraft, posting pictures of his collection which included a lightweight twin-engine helicopter and an amphibious aircraft.
Despite the investigation, Malaysian officials and friends of the pilots have told MailOnline this week that there are no reasons to suspect either the Captain or co-pilot of having personal problems that would have resulted in them taking control of the aircraft.
Mr Razak added authorities have not ruled out any possibilities in the international search for the plane, which now involves 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft.
'Clearly the search has entered a new phase. Over the last seven days, we have followed every lead and looked into every possibility,' Mr Razak said. 'For family and friends (of the passengers), we hope this new information brings us one step closer to finding the plane.'
Compound: A view of the entrance to Zaharie Ahmad's residence. Police have been stationed outside for the last week
Officers are said to have spent two hours searching the pilot's home today inside the luxury compound
Luxury: Shah is said to live at the property with his wife Faisa
Entrance: The gates outside the home of co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid who is also under police investigation
Journalists gathered outside Hamid's home in Shah Alam as police turned their attention to those on board as part of the wide-ranging probe
Suspicions: Jonti Roos (centre) claims she and her friend were entertained by Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who is one of the pilots of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight (right). He is now part of an investigation by police in Kuala Lumpur
Shah was an experienced and enthusiastic pilot, who had this flight simulator installed in his home
The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into the flight on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
It has now been confirmed the plane turned back and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital..
The disabling of the Boeing 777's transponder and messaging system occurred around 12 minutes apart. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe and gave authorities the clearest indication to date someone on-board was behind it.
The motive of the hijack is still not clear. No demands have been made and no groups have publicly claimed involvement in the disappearance.
Scott Shankland, an American Airlines pilot who spent several years as a co-pilot on Boeing 777s, said a captain would know how to disable radios and the plane's other tracking systems.
But a hijacker, even one trained to fly a plane, 'would probably be hunting and pecking quite a while' to find the correct way to switch off the equipment.
Some of the plane's data is transmitted automatically from equipment not located in the cockpit, making it even harder to avoid leaving electronic bread crumbs, he said.
John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at MIT who is familiar with the Boeing 777, said it would be possible for an intruder to turn off the transponders, but knowing how to shut down other systems in a bid to be stealthy would be more difficult.
Even if 9/11-style hijackers got that far, he said, they would be challenged to keep flying, make a successful landing, and hide the plane.
'If it was a hijacking, it was probably a hijacking gone bad,' he said.
Gone: The Malaysian Airways jet (not pictured) vanished on March 8 after communication was severed just one hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
Search effort: Colonel Do Duc Minh (far left) Vietnam Air Force's 370 Division's Chief of Staff, points at a map as he speaks to reporters about search flights aimed at finding the missing Malaysia Airlines plane
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.
The already global search effort will now be expanded along the two large corridors outlined in his speech.
Indian navy ships supported by long-range surveillance planes and helicopters scoured Andaman Sea islands for a third day without any success in finding evidence of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
Nearly a dozen ships, patrol vessels, surveillance aircraft and helicopters have been deployed, but 'we have got nothing so far,' said VSR Murthy, an Indian coastguard official.
The Indian navy's coordinated search has so far covered more than 100,579 square miles in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal "without any sighting or detection,' the Defence Ministry said.
Isolated: A large-scale search operation was launched in the Anadaman Islands, but Indian Navy vessels have drawn a blank
The search has been expanded to the central and eastern sides of the Bay of Bengal, the ministry said.
Bangladesh also joined the search effort in the Bay of Bengal with two patrol aircraft and two frigates, said Mahbubul Haque Shakil, an aide of Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.
Seeing no headway, Malaysian authorities suggested a new search area of 3,474 square miles to India along the Chennai coast in the Bay of Bengal, India's Defence Ministry said.
Developments, including the massive change in flightpath and subsequent radar detections, have ruled out the possibility of a huge mechanical failure.
It also means that extensive search efforts in the South China Sea have finished, with countries like Vietnam ending their involvement.
No wreckage of the missing jet has been found, despite alleged sitings in various locations throughout the week.
The USS Kidd arrived in the Strait of Malacca late Friday afternoon. It uses a using a 'creeping-line' search method of following a pattern of equally spaced parallel lines in an effort to completely cover the area.
A P-8A Poseidon, the most advanced long range anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare aircraft in the world, will arrive Saturday. It has a nine-member crew and has advanced surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, the department of defense said in a statement.
The USS Kidd arrived in the Strait of Malacca late Friday afternoon and will be searching in the Andaman Sea, and into the Bay of Bengal
Expanded search: A Royal Malaysian Air Force Navigator captain Izam Fareq Hassan (right) talks with his team members onboard a Malaysian Air Force CN235 aircraft during a search and rescue (SAR) operation
Expanded search: Indonesian Search And Rescue personnel keep a lookout on a rescue ship heading to the Andaman sea
Wanting answers: Relatives of passengers of a missing Malaysia Airlines plane attend a conference with airline representatives at a hotel in Beijing, China on Saturday
Exhausted: Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 rests in a room reserved for relatives awaiting news of the search for the plane
Malaysia has come under fire for what has been described as a 'pretty chaotic' search, with China saying the overall search effort has consequently been mired in confusion after a series of false alarms, rumors and contradictory statements.
Meanwhile, the hijacking news will renew focus on the two pilots at the helm of the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.
The only known blot on co-pilot Fariq's character appears to be the time 2011 when he invited two South African women into the cockpit when he and another officer flew a jet from Thailand to Malaysia.
In the days since the flight went missing, it has emerged that Shah was so passionate about flying he has is own flight simulator at home.
As the search continued for the missing Boeing 777, military radar suggested the plane was deliberately flown towards India's Andaman Islands.
Two sources familiar with the investigation said an unidentified aircraft - which investigators believe was flight MH370 - was plotted by military radar following a route between navigational waypoints.
This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.
Support: Thousands of people have written messages of support on a wall at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, for passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane
Hope: Paper cranes are pasted on a message board for passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur
The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying towards India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.
Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.
India recently began searching hundreds of uninhabited islands in the Andaman Sea, using heat-seeking devices.
Two Indian air force reconnaissance planes began flying over the islands as a precaution, after they and two naval ships scoured the seas surrounding the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, according to spokesman Col. Harmit Singh of India's Tri-Services Command on the territory.
The archipelago that stretches south of Myanmar contains 572 islands covering an area of 720 by 52 kilometers. Only 37 are inhabited, with the rest covered in dense forests.
Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein attended prayers for passengers and crew of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at a mosque near Kuala Lumpur International Airport
India today began searching hundreds of uninhabited islands in the Andaman Sea, using heat-seeking devices, officials said
The focus of search efforts shifted on Thursday from the South China Sea after the US said 'new information' indicated that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 may have gone down to the west in the Indian Ocean.
China, which had more than 150 citizens on board the missing plane, has deployed four warships, four coastguard vessels, eight aircraft and trained 10 satellites on a wide search area.
Chinese media have described the ship deployment as the largest Chinese rescue fleet ever assembled.
The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service.
Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a sea wall with its undercarriage on landing in San Francisco. Three people died in the incident.
THREE TYPES OF SIGNALS GIVEN OFF BY PLANES, AND HOW THEY RELATE TO MISSING MH370
The missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles or more, according to a U.S. official briefed on the search for the jet.
This raises the possibility that the plane may have flown far from the current search areas.
Here is a look at three types of signals planes give off, and how they relate to the missing jetliner:
TRANSPONDERS
Transponders are electronic devices that automatically identify commercial aircraft within air traffic control radar range and transmit information on the plane's identity, location and altitude to ground radar stations. Beyond radar range, they enable planes to be identified and tracked anywhere in the world by satellite. Transponders can be turned off by pilots.
The missing jet's transponder last communicated with Malaysian civilian radar about an hour after takeoff, when the plane was above the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and southern Vietnam.
ACARS
ACARS - or Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System - is a data link system used to transmit short messages such as weather updates and status reports between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite.
According to the U.S. official, ACARS messages sent by the missing plane continued after its transponder went silent, although he wasn't certain for how long.
OPERATING DATA SENT VIA SATELLITE
Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive data during a flight on how the aircraft is functioning and relay the information to the plane's home base. The idea is to provide information before the plane lands on whether maintenance work or repairs are needed. Even if an airline does not subscribe to the service, planes still periodically send automated signals - or pings - to the satellite seeking to establish contact.
Malaysia Airlines did not subscribe to the satellite service. The U.S. official said automated pings were received from the jetliner for four hours after it went missing, indicating it probably flew for hundreds of miles beyond its last confirmed sighting on radar.
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