Officials have not ruled out the possibility that a missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft was hijacked, according to reports this morning, as the search for a missing Boeing 777 continued for a third day.
A multinational team has been looking for Flight 370, which had 239 people on board, since Saturday after it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Malaysia’s head of civil aviation Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said reported sightings of debris from the plane in the seas south of Vietnam were unconfirmed.
“Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he said.
Forty ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations are taking part in the search in the seas off Vietnam and Malaysia.
One angle of investigation concerns two passengers who boarded the flight using stolen passports.
Interpol has confirmed the passengers were travelling with Italian and Austrian passports stolen in Thailand years ago.
Five passengers booked on the flight did not board, and their luggage was consequently removed.
Passengers on the flight were of 14 different nationalities. Two-thirds were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.
Shares in Malaysia Airlines fell 18% to a record low following the news. Shares in the carrier recovered some of the early fall, but are already down more than 30% for the year.
China Southern, which operated Flight 370 as a codeshare, also saw its shares fall by more than 3%.