Experts reveal how the deliberate flight path by the pilot helped to avoid military detection. 
 
 THE mysterious route taken by doomed flight MH370 before the plane vanished with 239 souls on-board has been re-examined by aviation experts who claim to have made chilling new discoveries. 
 
 For more than four years the world has grappled with questions over how the Boeing 777 airliner vanished into thin air en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. 
 
 And now several experts who have worked to determine what brought the plane down say they have more answers. 
 
 According to Senior Boeing 777 pilot and instructor Simon Hardy, MH370 was used in a murder-suicide mission by Captain Zaharie Amad Shah, who deliberately flew the aircraft over his hometown of Penang for an “emotional goodbye”, before ditching it in the Southern Indian Ocean “where it could never be found”. 
 
 MH370 victims remembered four years on 0:44 The families of victims of the MH370 plane tragedy have marked the fourth anniversary of the aircraft's disappearance. The memorial comes as Malaysian officials say the search for the flight will likely end in June, after extensive investigations. 
 
 In a 60 Minutes episode that aired on Sunday night, Mr Hardy said he made a discovery by reconstructing Mr Zaharie’s flight plan from the military radar. He said Mr Zaharie had avoided detection of the plane by either Malaysian or Thai military radar by flying along the border, crossing in and out of each country’s airspace. 
 
 It was also on the border that the plane’s transponder suddenly turned off. 
 
 “As the aircraft went across Thailand and Malaysia, it runs down the border, which is wiggling underneath, meaning it’s going in and out of those two countries, which is where their jurisdictions are,” Mr Hardy told the program. 
 
 “So both of the controllers aren’t bothered about this mysterious aircraft. Cause it’s, ‘Oh, it’s gone. It’s not in our space anymore’.” 
 
 Mr Hardy said the manoeuvres were clearly deliberate. 
 
 “If you were commissioning me to do this operation and try and make a 777 disappear, I would do exactly the same thing,” he said. 
 
 “As far as I’m concerned, it’s very accurate flying and I think it did the job, because we know, as a fact, that the military did not come and intercept the aircraft.” 
 
 There has been much speculation as to why the plane went so far off course and “dipped the wing” over Penang before making a sharp turn and heading south for the next six hours. According to Mr Hardy, it was so the pilot could see his hometown one last time. 
 
 “I spent a long time thinking about what this could be, what technical reason is there for this?” he said. 
 
 “And after two months, three months of thinking about it, I finally got the answer — somebody was looking out the window. 
 
 “It might [have been] a long, emotional goodbye or a short, emotional goodbye to his hometown.” 
 
 Mr Hardy was one of several aviation experts who appeared on the program to re-examine MH370 evidence and look at whether or not the tragedy was a deliberate act of murder carried out by Mr Zaharie. 
 
 Former Senior Investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Larry Vance, told 60 Minutes he was confident he knows what happened to the aircraft. 
 
 “I think the general public can take comfort in the fact that there is a growing consensus on the plane’s final moments,” he said. 
 
 Mr Vance said the pilot “was killing himself” and took the aircraft to the most remote place possible so it would “disappear”. 
 
 “Unfortunately, he was [also] killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately,” he said. 
 
 “He was taking it to a predestination, some place that he had planned to take it, and he flew that six hours to get it there.” 
 
 Mr Vance said he envisioned the plane on the bottom of the ocean, with the fuselage in one piece and the left wing still on. 
 
 “The right wing may be off, the engines are separate, but you basically have four pieces of aeroplane down there,” he said. 
 
 “It’s not scattered all over the bottom of the ocean.” 
 
 In 2016 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull unexpectedly said it was “very likely that the captain planned this shocking event”. 
 
 John Dawson, a lawyer who represented nine families from MH370 and MH17, recently told News Corp Australia the evidence pointed squarely to one of the aircrew being responsible. 
 
 “In MH370, you have the pilot flying between Malaysia and Beijing who turns back the aircraft. The evidence is so heavily weighted to involvement by one of the aircrew taking this aircraft down. 
 
 “That aircraft has probably depressurised, the people died of asphyxiation, it was premeditated murder. It was highly planned. The bodies have never been found.” 
 
 But despite experts’ observations, the Malaysian government, which has signed a “no cure, no fee” deal with Texas-based company Ocean Infinity to resume the hunt for the plane, remains silent on the question of Mr Zaharie’s possible involvement. 
 
 Ocean Infinity started the search on January 22 this year, following a failed $200 million search for the plane. At the time, experts said they expected to have answers within a matter of weeks. 
 
 The company has 90 search days to look for the plane, which has been spread over several months. 
 
 Officials said there was roughly an 85 per cent chance of finding traces of the wreckage in a new 25,000 square kilometre search area. 
 
 The investigation is expected to end in mid-June. 
 
 MH370 Mystery: strange new information 1:35 A state-of-the art vessel tasked with finding missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 mysteriously switched off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) for more than three days, sending some observers deep down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. 
 
 megan.palin@news.com.au | @Megan_Palin ||||| It's been six months since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared without a trace, and it remains one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. 
 
 There are still no signs of the Boeing 777 or the 239 people who were on board, reports CBS News transportation correspondent Jeff Pegues. In the meantime, the families of the missing continue their agonizing wait. 
 
 The search is set to resume sometime this month, but every day that passes adds to the frustration of family members still waiting to learn what really happened. 
 
 Six months later, investigators remain convinced the answers are in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Australia. Experts have narrowed the search zone to a 23,000 square mile area -- about the size of West Virginia. 
 
 Over the last several weeks, mapping the sea floor has found depths up to four miles. When the search resumes sophisticated under water sonar equipment and video cameras will be used to hopefully identify parts of the plane. 
 
 "That search will continue until all that is humanly possible to be done has been done to scour the probable impact zone," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said. 
 
 Twenty-six countries have aided a search that's spanned land, air and sea. Teams first looked in the South China Sea and then shifted their focus. 
 
 "We had so much time wasted in the beginning of the crash so we had so little data available and then the data we did have that we knew was solid was not being acted upon," former FAA spokesman Scott Brenner said. 
 
 Not knowing the truth has frustrated families and loved ones of the people on board the missing plane. Sarah Bajc's life-partner Phillip Wood was one of the 239 people on board. She said she misses him every morning and every night. 
 
 "Closure means a final answer and being able to bring our loved ones home," Bajc said. "I need to bring Philip home to bury him properly or to have him back in my life again. One of the two." 
 
 She blames the Malaysian government and the airline for unnecessary delays and misinformation. 
 
 But the airline has been dealing with another tragedy. Just four months after the disappearance of Flight 370, another Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over conflict-ridden eastern Ukraine. 
 
 A company that was already working to repair its reputation was dealt another blow, and now it is an airline struggling to fill seats and stay in business. 
 
 The future is uncertain for the families of the missing as well. Bajc said she is anxious, frustrated but also hopeful. 
 
 "I still feel Philip with me. I feel that connection is still alive," she said. "What I know is that he continues to reside in my heart and that gives me the strength to continue to push to try to find him and bring him home." 
 
 Investigators say there are more than 1,000 different flight paths the plane could have taken after it turned south. And after months of no answers there are even more theories about what could have happened, including whether there was a mechanical problem or if the pilots intentionally brought the plane down. ||||| While the official results of the inquiry are yet to be published, details have been passed on to foreign governments and crash investigators, according to the Sunday Times. 
 
 They revealed that after detectives carried out 170 interviews and profiled all of the 239 people on board the Boeing 777 when it vanished on 8 March, Captain Zaharie Shah was left as the most likely perpetrator if deliberate human action is to blame. 
 
 Satellite data provided by the British firm Inmarsat have shown that the jet took a sharp left turn after leaving Malaysian airspace en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It then followed a long arc deep into the southern Indian Ocean, where it presumably ran out of fuel and crashed. 
 
 Investigators have previously refused to “clear” the captain’s flight simulator of suspicious activity, and it now appears they found evidence of routes programmed to take a plane far out into the Indian Ocean and practising landing using a short runway on an island. 
 
 The data from the simulated flights had been deleted, the Times reported, but computer experts were able to retrieve them. 
 
 The police probe has also revealed that the 53-year-old captain was unique among those on board the flight for having no recorded commitments, either socially or for work, to take place after the date of the MH370 journey. 
 
 This was not in keeping with Zaharie’s usually outgoing and open nature, police said, and in contrast to the activities of his co-pilot, Fariq Hamid, and the rest of the crew. 
 
 The reported findings of the criminal investigation rely only on circumstantial evidence, and make mention of rumours of trouble in the pilot’s marriage and home life that have been denied by his family. 
 
 He was a veteran pilot who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981, and had more than 18,000 hours of flying experience. 
 
 The inquiry also does not rule of the possibility that the jet crashed due to some form of mechanical failure or an act of terrorism. 
 
 A spokesperson for the Malaysian police told the Times: “The police investigation is still ongoing. To date no conclusions can be made as to the contributor to the incident and it would be sub judice to say so. Nevertheless, the police are still looking into all possible angles.” 
 
 Zaharie’s family has said that the truth about what happened will only be revealed when MH370’s “black box” flight recorders are found. 
 
 And the recovery effort to locate the plane’s wreckage, the most extensive in aviation history, could be months or even years from making any real progress. 
 
 It emerged at the end of last week that the next phase of the search will focus on an area of the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles south of the first suspected crash site. 
 
 A Dutch ship has now joined the Chinese vessel tasked with surveying the ocean floor within a vast search zone, after which contractors will have 300 days to scan the designated area. ||||| Experts reveal how the deliberate flight path by the pilot helped to avoid military detection. 
 
 IF YOU think you finally know the truth about what happened to MH370 after watching Sunday’s 60 Minutes special on the missing plane, you are sorely mistaken. 
 
 While most aviation specialists agree that evidence points to the plane having been intentionally steered into the ocean, nobody has been able to come up with a motive. 
 
 Senior Boeing 777 pilot and instructor Simon Hardy believes Captain Zaharie Shah downed the aircraft in an act of murder-suicide, having plotted a flight plan to nowhere on his home simulator. 
 
 Repeating what he told the BBC way back in 2015, Mr Hardy told the Channel 9 program that Zaharie made a detour over Penang for a nostalgic last look at his home town before ditching in the southern Indian Ocean in a spot where he knew the aircraft “could never be found”. 
 
 The program was aired just days before the release of a new book MH370: Mystery Solved, written by aviator Larry Vance who also appeared on the 60 Minutes special. 
 
 Promotion leading up to the television special claimed its expert panel would reveal the “true fate” of the doomed aircraft, but there was plenty the program didn’t cover. 
 
 WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE? 
 
 What was missing from the commentary was a motive — what possible reason could Capt Zaharie have had to justify the murder of 238 other people? 
 
 Just days after the plane disappeared, Zaharie and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, were named by the Malaysian authorities as prime suspects in the aircraft’s disappearance. 
 
 From the very start, there were rumours that Zaharie’s marriage was in trouble and that he had decided to down the plane in a fit of rage and grief after learning that she was about to leave him. 
 
 Another theory claimed that he hijacked his own plane in protest of the jailing of then-Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, and as a way to destabilise the corrupt government of Najib Razak. 
 
 Zaharie’s sisters Sakinab Shah and Dah Ah have repeatedly denied both theories, claiming his marriage was going strong and arguing that he simply wasn’t smart enough to evade “all the hi-tech satellites in the world”. 
 
 Blaine Gibson, a US lawyer turned MH370 hunter who has collected dozens of pieces of suspected debris from the missing plane which have washed up in Madagascar and the coast of South Africa, pointed out in 2016 that both pilots were heavily scrutinised. 
 
 “They have gone under the microscope for more than two years and nothing in their personal lives indicates they could have done this,” Mr Gibson said. 
 
 Both pilots were cleared by Malaysian authorities, who examined psychological reports and footage of their behaviour before they boarded the doomed flight and found no red flags. 
 
 Former Malaysian dictator Mahathir Mohamad — who joined forces with his former arch nemesis Mr Ibrahim to oust Mr Razak in a stunning return to power last week — has publicly stated his belief that MH370 hijacked by remote control. 
 
 Even if it was true that Zaharie killed himself and 238 others in protest of Razak’s treatment of Mr Ibrahim, it seems unlikely that the new government would admit any significant association with him, given Mahathir’s intention to make him his deputy. 
 
 SOMEONE ACTUALLY CLAIMED RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 A shadowy group called the Chinese Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility for the disappearance of MH370 just days after the plane vanished — but officials were sceptical and said the claim could be a hoax. 
 
 The previously unheard of group sent an email to journalists across China that read: “You kill one of our clan, we will kill 100 of you as pay back.” 
 
 But the message provided no details of what brought the flight down. 
 
 Malaysia’s then-acting transport minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, told reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport that he doubted the claim’s legitimacy. 
 
 “There is no sound or credible grounds to justify their claims,” he said, according to Malaysian news reports. 
 
 Other officials said the claim could be a hoax aimed at increasing ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the wake of the recent knife attack in the southwestern city of Kunming on March 1, 2014, that left 29 people dead and injured about 140 others. 
 
 The message was delivered through an anonymous, encrypted Hushmail service that is virtually impossible to trace, authorities said. 
 
 In a strange twist, a Uighur painter named Memetjan Abdullah was aboard the plane on what was his first flight outside China. 
 
 AT LEAST TWO PASSENGERS HAD FAKE PASSPORTS 
 
 Authorities scrutinising passengers on board MH370 found to their horror that at least two had been carrying fake identification. 
 
 According to investigators, the two men, both Iranians were travelling on forged and stolen passports in a bid to reach Europe and seek asylum there. 
 
 The men, who were identified as Pouria Nour Mohammad, 19, and Seyed Mohammed Rezar Delawar, 29 were friends, according to Malaysian officials. 
 
 Nour Mohammad had been using a stolen Austrian passport in an attempt to reach Germany to seek asylum and reunite with his mother, Malaysian police said. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt. 
 
 Delawar was believed to have been using a stolen Italian passport. 
 
 At the time, Malaysia’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said investigators were looking into the involvement of a stolen passport syndicate. 
 
 Police raided a travel agency in the Thai resort city of Pattaya where the two men travelling with the stolen passports bought their tickets to Europe via Beijing. 
 
 A manager at the Grand Horizon Travel agency told The Times that an Iranian contact known as “Mr Ali’’, with whom the company had been doing business for three years, had asked her to buy Etihad and Qatar Airways flights for two customers. 
 
 The men were due to fly on March 1, 2014 but did not do so. When the tickets expired, Mr Ali asked her to book the cheapest flights to Europe — in this case, a Malaysian Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur connecting through Beijing and on to Amsterdam. 
 
 Visa requirements have been eased in recent years for Iranian nationals travelling to Malaysia, making the country a popular hub for Iranian tourists, students, and those looking for ways to emigrate to Europe. 
 
 An unnamed Iranian, who met both passengers in Malaysia and went with them to the airport, told the BBC’s Persian service in 2014 about the days before their departure. 
 
 “One of the two was my friend from high school,” the friend said, apparently referring to Nour Mohammad. 
 
 “I met him the first day he arrived in Malaysia … He said he was staying for three to four days but was eventually going to Germany. His final destination was Frankfurt.” 
 
 Very little was known about Delawar, other than that he was friends with the other Iranian. Despite this, authorities concluded it was unlikely that either man had terrorist links or had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance. ||||| KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A piece of a wing that washed up on an Indian Ocean island beach last week was part of the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Malaysia said on Thursday, confirming the discovery of the first trace of the plane since it vanished last year. 
 
 “Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370,” Prime Minister Najib Razak said in an early morning televised address. 
 
 “I would like to assure all those affected by this tragedy that the government of Malaysia is committed to do everything within our means to find out the truth of what happened,” Najib said. 
 
 The announcement, by providing the first direct evidence that the plane crashed in the ocean, closes a chapter in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history but still gives families of the 239 victims little clue as to why. 
 
 “It’s not the end,” said Jacquita Gonzales, who lost her husband Patrick Gomes, a flight attendant on board the aircraft. 
 
 “Although they found something, you know, it’s not the end. They still need to find the whole plane and our spouses as well. We still want them back,” she said. 
 
 The airline described the discovery as “a major breakthrough for us in resolving the disappearance of MH370. 
 
 “We expect and hope that there would be more objects to be found which would be able to help resolve this mystery,” it said in a statement issued as soon as Najib had spoken. 
 
 The fragment of wing known as a flaperon was flown to mainland France after being found last week covered in barnacles on a beach on France’s Indian Ocean island of Reunion. 
 
 Despite the Malaysian confirmation it was part of MH370, prosecutors in France stopped short of declaring they were certain, saying only that there was a “very strong presumption” that it was the case. 
 
 Paris Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said this was based on technical data supplied by both the manufacturer and airline but gave no indication that experts had discovered a serial number or unique markings that would put the link beyond doubt. 
 
 Boeing representatives confirmed that the flaperon came from a 777 jet “due to its technical characteristics, mentioning the color, the structure of the joints,” he said. 
 
 Secondly, Malaysia Airlines was able to provide documentation of the actual aircraft used on flight MH370. 
 
 French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, July 29, 2015. REUTERS/Zinfos974/Prisca Bigot 
 
 “On this basis, it was possible for a connection to be made between the object examined by the experts and the flaperon of the Boeing 777 of MH370,” Mackowiak told reporters in Paris. 
 
 He said more analysis would be carried out on Thursday, but he could not say when further results would be announced. 
 
 A fragment of luggage also found in Reunion would be examined by French police as soon as possible, he added. 
 
 “YET TO BEGIN” 
 
 Investigators looking at the wing flap are likely to start by putting thin slices of metal under a high-powered microscope, to see subtle clues in the metal’s crystal structure about how it deformed on impact, said Hans Weber, president of TECOP International, Inc., an aerospace technology consulting firm based in San Diego, California. 
 
 Later, investigators would probably clean the piece and “do a full physical examination, using ultrasonic analysis before they open it up to see if there’s any internal damage,” Weber said. “That might take quite awhile. A month or months.” 
 
 John Goglia, a former board member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, told Reuters: “The real work is yet to begin”. 
 
 “They will identify everything they can from the metal: damage, barnacles, witness marks on the metal. They’re going to look at the brackets (that held the flaperon in place) to see how they broke. From that they can tell the direction and attitude of the airplane when it hit. There’s a lot to be told from the metal.” 
 
 However, experts said the cause of the disaster may remain beyond the reach of investigators until other debris or data and cockpit voice recorders are recovered. 
 
 “A wing’s moving surfaces give you far fewer clues than bigger structures like the rudder, for example. As a single piece of evidence, it is likely to reveal quite little other than it comes from MH370,” said a former investigator who has participated in several international probes of crashes at sea. 
 
 The examination of the part is being carried out under the direction of a judge at an aeronautical test facility run by the French military at Balma, a suburb of the southwestern city of Toulouse, and witnessed by Malaysian and other officials. 
 
 Officials from the United States, Australia, China, Britain and Singapore as well as manufacturer Boeing were also on hand. Boeing said it was providing technical expertise. 
 
 Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, about 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from Reunion. 
 
 Slideshow (5 Images) 
 
 The Boeing 777 was minutes into its scheduled flight when it disappeared from civil radar. Investigators believe that someone may have deliberately switched off the aircraft’s transponder, diverted it thousands of miles off course, and deliberately crashed into the ocean off Australia. 
 
 A $90 million hunt along a rugged 60,000 sq km patch of sea floor 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth has yielded nothing. 
 
 The search has been extended to another 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles) and Malaysian and Australian authorities say this will cover 95 percent of MH370’s flight path. ||||| KUALA LUMPUR/WASHINGTON A new search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may be opened in the Indian Ocean, the White House said, significantly broadening the potential location of the plane, which disappeared nearly a week ago with 239 people on board. 
 
 Expanding the search area to the Indian Ocean would be consistent with the theory that the Boeing 777 may have detoured to the west about an hour after take-off from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. 
 
 "It's my understanding that based on some new information that's not necessarily conclusive - but new information - an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington. 
 
 Carney did not specify the nature of the new information and Malaysian officials were not immediately available to comment. 
 
 The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane is one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation. There has been no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries across Southeast Asia. 
 
 Satellites picked up faint electronic pulses from the aircraft after it went missing on Saturday, but the signals gave no information about where the jet was heading and little else about its fate, two sources close to the investigation said on Thursday. 
 
 But the "pings" indicated its maintenance troubleshooting systems were switched on and ready to communicate with satellites, showing the aircraft was at least capable of communicating after losing touch with air traffic controllers. 
 
 The system transmits such pings about once an hour, according to the sources, who said five or six were heard. However, the pings alone are not proof that the plane was in the air or on the ground, the sources said. 
 
 Malaysian authorities have said the last civilian contact occurred as the Boeing 777-200ER flew north into the Gulf of Thailand. They said military radar sightings indicated it may have turned sharply to the west and crossed the Malay Peninsula toward the Andaman Sea. 
 
 The new information about signals heard by satellites shed little light on the mystery of what happened to the plane, whether it was a technical failure, a hijacking or another kind of incident on board. 
 
 While the troubleshooting systems were functioning, no data links were opened, the sources said, because the companies involved had not subscribed to that level of service from the satellite operator, the sources said. 
 
 Boeing and Rolls-Royce, which supplied its Trent engines, declined to comment. 
 
 Earlier Malaysian officials denied reports that the aircraft had continued to send technical data and said there was no evidence that it flew for hours after losing contact with air traffic controllers early last Saturday. 
 
 "It's extraordinary that with all the technology that we've got that an aircraft can disappear like this," Tony Tyler, the head of the International Air Transport Association that links over 90 percent of the world's airlines, told reporters in London. 
 
 MILITARY DEPLOYMENT GROWS 
 
 Ships and aircraft are now combing a vast area that had already been widened to cover both sides of the Malay Peninsula and the Andaman Sea. 
 
 The U.S. Navy was sending an advanced P-8A Poseidon plane to help search the Strait of Malacca, separating the Malay Peninsula from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It had already deployed a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft to those waters. 
 
 U.S. defense officials told Reuters that the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, USS Kidd, was heading to the Strait of Malacca, answering a request from the Malaysian government. The Kidd had been searching the areas south of the Gulf of Thailand, along with the destroyer USS Pinckney. 
 
 India's Defence Ministry has ordered the deployment of ships, aircraft and helicopters from the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. An Indian P8I Poseidon surveillance plane was sent to the Andaman islands on Thursday. 
 
 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. 
 
 WRONG IMAGES 
 
 On the sixth day of the search, planes scanned an area of sea where Chinese satellite images had shown what could be debris but found no sign of the airliner. 
 
 Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference the images were provided accidentally, saying the Chinese government neither authorized nor endorsed putting them on a website. "The image is not confirmed to be connected to the plane," he said. 
 
 It was the latest in a series of contradictory reports, adding to the confusion and agony of the relatives of the passengers. 
 
 As frustration mounted over the failure to find any trace of the plane, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve coordination in the search. 
 
 Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, demanded that the "relevant party" step up coordination while China's civil aviation chief said he wanted a "smoother" flow of information from Malaysia, which has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster. 
 
 Malaysian police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure. 
 
 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 seawall with its undercarriage on landing in San Francisco, killing three people. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Niluksi Koswanage, Siva Govindasamy, Yantoultra Ngui and Al Zaquan Amer Hamzah in Kuala Lumpur, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Tim Hepher in Paris and Andrea Shalal, Will Dunham, Phil Stewart and Roberta Rampton in Washington.; Writing by David Storey and Dean Yates; Editing by Frank McGurty) ||||| Search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 suspended after confirmation it went down in Indian Ocean 
 
 Video 
 
 Image 
 
 Video Malaysian PM: 'flight MH370 ended in Indian Ocean' 1:09 Play video Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says new data confirms that missing Malaysian Airline flight 370 ended journey in southern Indian Ocean. Deborah Lutterbeck reports. Every angle we've seen on MH370 2:28 Play video As it has unfolded, the mystery of missing flight MH370 and the incredible twists and turns in world news coverage. 
 
 THE CEO of Malaysia Airlines says the airline has extended its prayers to the families of the 239 passengers on board missing Flight MH370. 
 
 Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said he was devastated the passengers didn’t make it to their destination alive. 
 
 “We do not know why, we do not know how this terrible tragedy happened. But as MAS family, we all praying for passengers & crew of MH370,” he told a media conference in Kuala Lumpur. 
 
 The airline was criticised for informing relatives by text message that the plane had crashed, but the CEO said they did so as they wanted the families to hear the news before the rest of the world. 
 
 Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said all next-of-kin relatives had been paid $5000. He said the Australian Government would only grant visas to relatives once evidence of the plane had been found. 
 
 Asked if he would resign, he said it was a personal decision, and it would be taken later. 
 
 In Beijing, hundreds of angry protesters, many of them relatives of passengers, gathered at the Malaysian embassy to demonstrate against the Malaysia’s handling of the disaster. 
 
 The search effort for wreckage from the lost airliner will be boosted later today with the arrival of a South Korean C-130 Hercules transport and P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft at the RAAF’s Pearce base near Perth. 
 
 The hunt for debris was suspended earlier due to bad weather as huge seas slammed the search area. 
 
 At midday today the sea state was estimated at between six and seven on the World Meteorological Organisation chart and that means waves of between four and nine metres. 
 
 Such conditions make finding or retrieving any debris virtually impossible and they increase the risk of wreckage sinking under the weight of the waves. 
 
 “Due to rough seas, HMAS Success departed the search area early this morning and is now in transit south of the search area until seas abate,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority advised this morning. 
 
 “The area is also forecast to experience strong gale force winds of up to 80km/h, periods of heavy rain, and low cloud with a ceiling between 200 and 500 feet.” 
 
 AMSA said conducting the search in such conditions would be hazardous and pose a risk to crews. 
 
 This morning, AMSA stated that search operations were “expected to resume tomorrow, if weather conditions permit”, but if conditions continue to deteriorate it could be several days before the search is resumed. 
 
 The suspension comes after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that a new analysis of satellite data showed that the missing plane plunged into the Indian Ocean, presumably killing all those on board. 
 
 The cause of the incident remains unknown, although there are increasing suggestions that pilot suicide may have been to blame. 
 
 Mr Najib said the Inmarsat satellite company had taken advantage of a never-before used technology and found that MH370 flew along the southern corridor. 
 
 “Its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth,” he said 17 days after MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. 
 
 The United States Navy is also sending a deep-sea drone to help in the search for the emergency signals that should be being emitted by MH370’s ‘black boxes’. These signals are supposed to be automatically activated in the event of a crash. 
 
 The Bluefin 21 drone is designed to be flown to areas of need before being towed behind a ship at depths where it is still enough and quiet enough to hear the “pings”. 
 
 #MH370 search and rescue equipment, including #USNavy’s black box locator, loaded on aircraft for Indian Ocean pic.twitter.com/RPYGrYgdXp — U.S. Navy (@USNavy) March 24, 2014 
 
 The search for the missing Boeing 777 is taking place in a section of the southern Indian Ocean known as the “Roaring Forties” for the strong westerly winds that blow between latitude 40 degrees and 50 degrees. 
 
 University of New South Wales oceanographer Dr Erik van Sebille said the area was characterised by cold fronts that sweep east every four to five days, causing pounding 6m waves and churning up the icy seas. 
 
 “This is the beginning of the roaring 40s, where the influence of the Antarctic continent starts,” he said. 
 
 “The winds become very strong, the water temperature is about 4 degrees and the waves are very high.” 
 
 REACTION: Sadness touches all in Malaysia 
 
 GALLERY: The search for MH370 
 
 Malaysia plane 'crashed into ocean' 3:16 Play video Satellite data has confirmed flight MH370 carrying 239 people crashed into the southern Indian Ocean. 
 
 FORMULA ONE CONCERT CANCELLED ‘AS A SIGN OF RESPECT’ 
 
 A concert to mark Malaysia’s Formula One Grand Prix weekend which was set to feature US star Christina Aguilera has been cancelled due to a passenger jet crash, its sponsor said. 
 
 State oil company Petronas, which sponsors the Mercedes F1 racing team and the annual concert, said it called off the show as “a sign of respect to the families and next-of-kin of the crew and passengers of flight MH370”. 
 
 Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the Malaysia Airlines flight, which went missing on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. 
 
 The concert was to be held Friday and Saturday at the Kuala Lumpur Twin Towers and feature Aguilera, Korean star Rain and R&B musician Craig David. 
 
 “It is truly a tragedy and we are deeply saddened about the crew and passengers of flight MH370,” said a statement by Petronas on the concert’s Facebook page. 
 
 Formula One organisers were to meet later today to discuss a possible tribute to victims at this weekend’s event. 
 
 Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, who arrived in the Malaysian capital earlier, said on Twitter that “all my prayers go to friends & families of the passengers on # MH370”. 
 
 Malaysia will also host a EurAsia Cup golf tournament and the prestigious Laureus sports awards this week. 
 
 Laureaus World Sports Academy, which will honour last year’s top sports figures Wednesday, said it would have a reduced programme because of the disaster. 
 
 Academy chairman Edwin Moses said a football friendly between past greats would be dedicated to those hit by the disaster 
 
 FAMILIES INFORMED BY TEXT MESSAGE 
 
 Malaysia Airlines informed the relatives of MH370 passengers of the news via SMS message. 
 
 “Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived ... we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean,” the text stated. 
 
 At the press conference, Mr Najib confirmed the worst fears of passengers’ families. 
 
 “This is a remote location far from any possible landing sites,” he said. 
 
 “It is therefore with deep sadness that I regret that I must inform you that according to this new data that MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean. 
 
 “The past few weeks have been heartbreaking. I know this news must be harder still.” 
 
 The announcement was greeted with an outpouring of grief by the relatives of passengers. 
 
 The loved-ones of Chinese passengers, who made up the majority of travellers on the flight, were called to a hotel near the airport in Beijing to hear the announcement. Afterwards, they filed out of a conference room grief-stricken. 
 
 One woman collapsed and fell on her knees, crying “My son! My son!” 
 
 MH370: Copilot’s first 777 flight without a minder 
 
 ANALYSIS: Recovery operation will stretch Australia’s capabilities 
 
 ANGER FROM FAMILIES 
 
 A statement purporting to be from families of the passengers denounced the airline, the Malaysian government and the military as “the real executioners”. 
 
 “From March 8 when they announced that MH370 lost contact to today, 18 days have passed during which the Malaysian government and the military constantly tried to delay, deceive the passengers’ families and cheat the whole world,” the statement read in part. 
 
 “We will take every possible means to pursue the unforgivable crimes and responsibility of all three (the airline, government and military).” 
 
 The veracity of the statement has not yet been verified. 
 
 It refers to 154 passengers who died, suggesting that the statement has been made on behalf of the victims of the families of the Chinese passengers only. 
 
 Whoa. The families of passengers on flight #MH370 have issued a very strong statement: pic.twitter.com/La8Cy0162H — Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) March 24, 2014 
 
 Most of the relatives refused to speak to gathered reporters and some lashed out in anger, urging journalists not to film the scene. Security guards restrained a man with close-cropped hair as he kicked a TV cameraman and shouted, “Don’t film. I’ll beat you to death!” 
 
 The daughter of MH370’s chief steward Andrew Nari sent Twitter messages after the news broke. Maira Elizabeth Nari said: “I just don’t know what to say about it. :’) 
 
 In another message, she wrote: “I don’t know what to say to all of you, but thank you so much for the support. To my closest friends, thank you. God bless all of you! :’) x” 
 
 The airline said it would transport families to Perth if parts of the plane are found. It said the “ongoing multinational search operation will continue as we seek answers to the questions which remain’’. 
 
 THEORY: Was MH370 on a suicide mission? 
 
 TOURISM: Has MH370 changed perceptions about Malaysia? 
 
 HAND OVER DATA, CHINA TELLS MALAYSIA 
 
 China has demanded that Malaysia hand over the satellite data which led to its judgement that missing flight MH370 crashed at sea and that none on board survived. 
 
 In a meeting late Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng asked Malaysia’s Ambassador to China, Iskandar Bin Sarudin, to provide the “detailed evidence’’ that led to the conclusion, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. 
 
 “We demand the Malaysian side to state the detailed evidence that leads them to this judgement as well as supply all the relevant information and evidence about the satellite data analysis,’’ Xie said, according to a statement on the ministry’s website. 
 
 “The search and rescue work cannot stop now, we demand the Malaysian side to continue to finish all the work including search and rescue,’’ Xie said. 
 
 END OF UNCERTAINTY 
 
 The news ends weeks of uncertainty over the fate of the passenger jet, although there is still no clear answer as to how or why the plane went down. 
 
 Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the announcement by the Malaysian PM moved the search to a “new phase”. 
 
 “It moves it to a stage where we are now investigating an accident,” he told reporters in Parliament House. 
 
 Mr Truss said “new decisions” will have to be made about the future of operations now and that Malaysia needs to take control of investigations under the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. 
 
 He admitted “not a lot of progress” was made overnight and given the weather, there will be further setbacks in the search today. 
 
 MASTHEADS REMEMBER VICTIMS 
 
 Malaysian newspapers ran striking black front pages on Tuesday in tribute to the victims. 
 
 Malaysia’s biggest English-language daily, The Star, ran a stark wrap-around cover emblazoned with the words “MH370 R.I.P.’’ The names of the victims, rendered in small print, made up the letters of the headline. 
 
 The New Straits Times’ darkened front page showed an aircraft above the words “Goodnight, MH370’’ - a reference to the last message from the cockpit, “All right, good night’’, before the Malaysia Airlines jet lost contact on March 8. 
 
 Malay and Chinese-language papers also ran front pages with black backgrounds, while The Sun, an English-language daily, changed its masthead to black. 
 
 The Star said in an editorial that the relatives’ “long wait for some form of closure has finally arrived’’. 
 
 But it called for unsparing efforts to establish the reasons for the crash. 
 
 On social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, many Malaysians turned their profile backgrounds black or displayed a plane icon in tribute to the victims. 
 
 ‘WE WILL WELCOME FAMILIES’: ABBOTT 
 
 Prime Minister Tony Abbott said family members of those on board will be embraced if they want to travel to Australia during the search effort. 
 
 “This has been a desperately difficult time for thousands and thousands of people right around the globe, particularly in China as well as in Malaysia,” the Prime Minister told reporters in Canberra. 
 
 “I understand that the loved ones of those on that plane may well wish to come to Australia in coming days and weeks; they will find a welcoming country that is more than willing to embrace them in this very difficult time,” he said. 
 
 Australia played a key role in identifying the southern Indian Ocean as the most likely crash site. 
 
 On March 16, an Australian satellite image picked up what appeared to be debris of about 24 metres in length in the area. A Chinese satellite spotted further debris 120km away two days later. 
 
 The confirmation the plane went down came after Prime Minster Tony Abbott announced that two “objects” were located by an RAAF spotter plane. Mr Abbott told Parliament the first object was grey or green and circular and the second was orange and rectangular. Experts believe the orange items could possibly be life rafts. 
 
 TIMING: Disaster film shelved
– The echo chamber that is the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has yet to yield much in the way of definites, but the focus continues to remain on the pilots and the theory that the jet's disappearance was not an accident or mechanical failure. This "was an intentional, deliberate act to bring down this airplane," House Homeland Security chief Michael McCaul said today. "Something was going on with the pilot. This all leads toward the cockpit." Former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz seconded that, reports Politico, saying that the intentional shuttering of the plane's communications equipment "is damning evidence that indicates something was going on in the flight deck." Meanwhile, House Intel chair Mike Rogers wants to know "if there was some terrorist nexus" involved, adding that while many theories on the plane's fate abound, it "still may be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean." A look around at the latest: The AP delves into the relatively rare occurrence of pilot suicide, which was a factor in .3% of plane crashes in the decade ending in 2012. The possibility that the plane was hijacked has given hope to some passengers' families, reports the LA Times. "My gut feeling is that it landed. I still feel his spirit. I don’t feel he is dead," says the partner of American passenger Philip Wood. Pakistan says the plane never registered on its radar, reports CNN—and if it had, it would have been treated as a terrorist threat. India today called off search efforts for the jet pending "a strategy for further searches" from Malaysian officials, reports the AP. Slate runs down the 634 runways where the missing plane could have landed.