KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The Malaysian military has radar data showing the missing Boeing 777 jetliner changed course and made it to the Malacca Strait, hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the last position recorded by civilian authorities, according to a senior military official. 
 
 Over a dozen microphones are propped on a table as Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar answers questions from members of the media, raising their hands waiting their turn as seen in the shadows cast... (Associated Press) 
 
 An Indonesian Navy crew member scans the water bordering Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand during a search operation for the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 near the Malacca straits on Monday, March... (Associated Press) 
 
 This screengrab from flightradar24.com shows the last reported position of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, Friday night March 7, 2014. The Boeing 777-200 carrying 239 people lost contact over the South... (Associated Press) 
 
 Airport staff move a white board plastered with messages of hope and encouragement to all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, MH370, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Tuesday, March... (Associated Press) 
 
 Pictures of the two men, a 19-year old Iranian, identified by Malaysian police as Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, left, and the man on the right, his identity still not released, who boarded the now missing... (Associated Press) 
 
 CORRECTS SOURCE TO MALAYSIAN POLICE INSTEAD OF INTERPOL - This combination of images released by Malaysian police during a news conference in Sepang, Malaysia, on Tuesday, March 11, 2014, shows an Iranian... (Associated Press) 
 
 Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 watch a TV news program about the missing flight as they wait for official updates from Malaysia Airlines at a hotel ballroom... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Chinese relative of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane is surrounded by media as she answers questions about how families are being compensated outside a hotel room set aside for relatives... (Associated Press) 
 
 The development injects more mystery into the investigation of the disappearance of Saturday's flight, and raises questions about why the aircraft was not transmitting signals detectable by civilian radar. 
 
 Local newspaper Berita Harian quoted Malaysian air force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud as saying radar at a military base had detected the airliner at 2:40 a.m. near Pulau Perak at the northern approach to the strait, a busy waterway that separates the western coast of Malaysia and Indonesia's Sumatra island. 
 
 "After that, the signal from the plane was lost," he was quoted as saying. 
 
 A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed the report and also said the plane was believed to be flying low. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. 
 
 Authorities had earlier said the plane, which took off from Kuala Lumpur on the western coast of Malaysia at 12:40 a.m. Saturday en route to Beijing, may have attempted to turn back, but they expressed surprise that it would do so without informing ground control. 
 
 The search for the plane was initially focused on waters between the eastern coast of Malaysia and Vietnam, the position where aviation authorities last tracked it. No trace of the plane, which was carrying 239 people, has been found by than 40 planes and ships from at least 10 nations searching the area. 
 
 Earlier Tuesday, Malaysia Airlines said in a statement that search and rescue teams had expanded their scope to the Malacca Strait. An earlier statement said the western coast of Malaysia was "now the focus," but the airline subsequently said that phrase was an oversight. It didn't elaborate. Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the search remained "on both sides" of the country. 
 
 Also Tuesday, authorities said two people who boarded the flight using stolen passports were Iranians who had purchased tickets to Europe. Their use of stolen documents had raised speculation of a possible terrorist link. 
 
 Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said investigators had determined one was a 19-year-old Iranian, Pouria Nourmohammadi Mehrdad, and that it seemed likely he was planning to migrate to Germany. 
 
 "We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said. 
 
 Interpol identified the second man as Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, a 29-year-old Iranian, and released an image of the two boarding a plane at the same time. Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said the two men traveled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to their stolen Austrian and Italian documents. 
 
 He said speculation of terrorism appeared to be dying down "as the belief becomes more certain that these two individuals were probably not terrorists." He appealed to the public for more information about them. 
 
 Noble said neither of the men had a criminal record. 
 
 Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, said it is investigating an Australian television report that the co-pilot on the missing plane had invited two women into the cockpit during a flight two years ago. 
 
 Jonti Roos described the encounter on Australia's "A Current Affair." The airline said it wouldn't comment until its investigation is complete. 
 
 Roos said she and her friend were allowed to stay in the cockpit during the entire one-hour flight on Dec. 14, 2011, from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur. She said the arrangement did not seem unusual to the plane's crew. 
 
 "Throughout the entire flight, they were talking to us and they were actually smoking throughout the flight," Roos said. 
 
 Roos didn't immediately reply to a message sent to her via Facebook. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt and Jim Gomez in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report. ||||| KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia's military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometers to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday. 
 
 In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew. 
 
 Malaysian authorities have said previously that Flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off early Saturday from Kuala Lumpur bound for the Chinese capital, Beijing. 
 
 But a senior military officer who has been briefed on investigations told Reuters the aircraft had made a detour to the west after communications with civilian authorities ended. 
 
 "It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the officer said. 
 
 The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast, while Kota Bharu is on the northeast coast. 
 
 Such a detour would appear to undermine the theory that the aircraft suffered a sudden, catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean the plane flew at least 500 km (350 miles) after its last contact with air traffic control. 
 
 The plane's transponder and other tracking systems were either shut off or not functioning around the time that communications with air traffic control ended. That would have prevented so-called secondary radar used by civilian authorities from identifying it, but not primary radar used by the military. 
 
 After the comments from the officer, a non-military source familiar with the investigations said the reported detour was one of several theories and was being checked. 
 
 But a spokesman for the Malaysian prime minister's office said in an interview with the New York Times that senior military officials told him there was no evidence the plane recrossed the Malaysian peninsula, only that it may have tried to turn back. 
 
 "As far as they know, except for the air turn-back, there is no new development," said the spokesman, Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad. 
 
 LOST CONTACT 
 
 At the time it lost contact with civilian air traffic control, the plane was roughly midway between Kota Bharu, to the northeast of Kuala Lumpur, and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 feet. 
 
 Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper quoted Air Force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected at 2:40 a.m. by military radar near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. It was flying about 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) lower than its previous altitude, he was quoted as saying. 
 
 There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter. 
 
 A huge international search operation has been mostly focused on the shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand off Malaysia's east coast, although the Strait of Malacca has been included since Sunday. 
 
 Navy ships, military aircraft, helicopters, coast guard and civilian vessels from 10 nations have criss-crossed the seas off both coasts of Malaysia without success. 
 
 In the absence of any concrete evidence to explain the plane's disappearance, authorities have not ruled out anything. 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. 
 
 "Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities," Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said at a news conference. 
 
 "We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioral pattern of all the passengers." 
 
 The airline said it was taking seriously a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing plane had invited her and a female travelling companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security. 
 
 "Malaysia Airlines has become aware of the allegations being made against First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid which we take very seriously. We are shocked by these allegations. We have not been able to confirm the validity of the pictures and videos of the alleged incident," the airline said in a statement. 
 
 The woman, Jonti Roos, said in an interview with Australia's Channel Nine TV that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by Hamid and the pilot between Phuket, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur in December 2011. The TV channel showed pictures of the four apparently in a plane's cockpit. 
 
 STOLEN PASSPORTS 
 
 The fact that at least two passengers on board the missing flight had used stolen passports has raised suspicions of foul play. But Southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers. 
 
 Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble named the two men as Iranians, aged 18 and 29, who had entered Malaysia using their real passports before using the stolen European documents to board the Beijing-bound flight. 
 
 "The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," Noble said. 
 
 The Malaysian police chief, Khalid, said the younger man, who he said was 19, appeared to be an illegal immigrant. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said. 
 
 "We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group, and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany," Khalid said, though he said he could eliminate the possibility of a hijacking until the investigations were completed. 
 
 In Washington, the director of the CIA in Washington said intelligence officials could not rule out terrorism as a factor. "You cannot discount any theory," CIA Director John Brennan said. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE 
 
 About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. Other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans. 
 
 China has deployed 10 satellites using high-resolution earth imaging capabilities, visible light imaging and other technologies to "support and assist in the search and rescue operations", the People's Liberation Army Daily said. 
 
 U.S. government officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration have arrived in the region to provide "any necessary assistance" with the investigation, White House spokesman Jay Carney said in Washington. 
 
 Underlining the breadth of the search effort, an international body set up to detect possible breaches of a ban on nuclear tests said it was analyzing infrasound data "for possible clues" on the missing flight. 
 
 The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, which has a global network of monitoring stations, said standard reports from its International Data Centre "did not reveal anything that could aid in the search for the missing MH370 plane". 
 
 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 on landing in San Francisco, killing three people. 
 
 U.S. planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Siva Govindasamy, Stuart Grudgings, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Yantoultra Ngui in Kuala Lumpur; Ben Blanchard, Megha Rajagopalan and Adam Rose in Beijing; Nguyen Phuong Linh on Phu Quoc Island, Mai Nguyen and Martin Petty in Hanoi; Robert Birsel and Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Bangkok; Alwyn Scott in New York; Tim Hepher in Paris; Brian Leonal in Singapore; Mark Hosenball and Ian Simpson in Washington, Johnny Cotton in Lyon, France and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Alex Richardson) ||||| SEPANG, Malaysia — Malaysian authorities now believe that a jetliner missing since Saturday may have radically changed course around the time that it lost contact with ground controllers, news that added to the air of confusion and disarray surrounding the investigation and search operation. But they gave conflicting accounts of the apparent course change and of what may have happened afterward. 
 
 As criticism mounted of the Malaysian authorities’ inability to find any trace of the jet, the officials have repeatedly insisted that they were doing their best to solve the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with scarce data and almost no precedent. Yet the government and the airline have also released imprecise, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information, with civilian officials sometimes contradicting military leaders. 
 
 On Tuesday, three days after the plane disappeared while on an overnight flight to Beijing, the country’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, was quoted in a Malaysian newspaper as saying the military received signals on Saturday that after the aircraft stopped communicating with ground controllers, it turned from heading northeast to heading west, lowered its altitude and flew hundreds of miles across Peninsular Malaysia and out over the Strait of Malacca before the tracking went blank. 
 
 The air force chief did not say what kind of signals the military had tracked. But his remarks raised questions about whether the military had noticed the plane as it flew across the country, and about when it informed civilian authorities. 
 
 According to the general’s account, the aircraft was near Pulau Perak, an island more than 100 miles off the western shore of the Malaysian peninsula, when the last sign of it was recorded at 2:40 a.m. Saturday. 
 
 As anger and confusion mounted, General Rodzali issued a statement late Tuesday denying some details of the newspaper account, but he also said that the Air Force was analyzing possibilities of the missing jet’s flight path and that “it would not be appropriate” to reach conclusions. 
 
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 Continue reading the main story The Search Andaman Sea Gulf of Thailand Vietnam Cambodia Phu Quoc Island Approx. 750 miles Paths from six recent flights of the same flight number. Search AREA Expanded Search AREA Thailand 100 ft. 250 ft. water depth 5,000 ft. Approx. position of plane when the crew stopped communicating with controllers, around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. 200 miles 1,000 ft. Pulau Perak Banda Aceh Penang Strait of Malacca South China Sea Indonesia Malaysia Medan Kuala Lumpur Subang Kuala Lumpur International Airport Indian Ocean Search bases Expanded search area Malaysian authorities announced Monday that they were expanding the search zone, including areas in the Strait of Malacca. Last radar signal On Wednesday, a military official said the last radar signal, which may have been from the missing plane, was 200 miles northwest of Penang at 2:15 a.m. Pulau Perak island A Malaysian military official was quoted in a local newspaper on Tuesday saying the military had received signals from the plane near this island at 2:40 a.m. Saturday. Subang airport Malaysia Airlines said authorities were “looking at a possibility” that the plane was headed to Subang, an airport that handles mainly domestic flights. Andaman Sea Gulf of Thailand Vietnam Cambodia Phu Quoc Island Approx. 750 miles Paths from six recent flights of the same flight number. Expanded Search AREA Search AREA Thailand 1o0 ft. 250 ft. water depth 5,000 ft. 200 miles Approx. position of plane when the crew stopped communicating with controllers, around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. 1,000 ft. Pulau Perak Banda Aceh Penang Strait of Malacca Indonesia Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Medan South China Sea Subang Kuala Lumpur International Airport Search bases Expanded search area Malaysian authorities announced Monday that they were expanding the search zone, including areas in the Strait of Malacca. Last radar signal On Wednesday, a military official said the last radar signal, which may have been from the missing plane, was 200 miles northwest of Penang at 2:15 a.m. Pulau Perak island Malaysia’s air force chief was quoted in a local newspaper on Tuesday saying the military had received signals from the plane near this island at 2:40 a.m. Saturday. Subang airport Malaysia Airlines said authorities were “looking at a possibility” that the plane was headed to Subang, an airport that handles mainly domestic flights. Approx. position of plane when the crew stopped communicating with controllers, around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Approx. 750 miles Viet. Thailand Search AREA Penang Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Subang International Airport Indian Ocean Indonesia 
 
 The assertion that the plane might have flown into the Strait of Malacca stunned aviation experts as well as people in China, who had been told again and again that the authorities lost contact with the plane more than an hour earlier, when it was on course over the Gulf of Thailand, east of the peninsula. But the new account seemed to fit with the decision on Monday, previously unexplained, to expand the search area to include waters west of the peninsula. 
 
 Most of the aircraft’s 227 passengers were Chinese, and the new account prompted an outpouring of anger on Chinese social media sites. “Malaysia, how could you hide something this big until now?” said one posting on Sina.com Weibo, a service similar to Twitter. 
 
 On Wednesday, The Global Times, a widely read Chinese tabloid, said that “information issued publicly from Malaysia had been extraordinarily chaotic.” 
 
 David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flightglobal, a news and data service for the aviation sector, said the Malaysian government seemed evasive and confused, and he questioned why, if the remarks attributed to General Daud were true, the government took so long to reveal evidence about a westward flight path. 
 
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 “The relatives of the people who’ve gone missing are being deprived of information about what’s happened to the airplane — that for me is the issue,” he said. “If somebody knows something and isn’t telling, that’s not nice under the circumstances.” 
 
 Adding to the confusion, Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad, spokesman for the prime minister’s office, said in a telephone interview that he had checked with senior military officials, who told him there was no evidence that the plane had recrossed the Malaysian peninsula, only that it may have attempted to turn back. 
 
 “As far as they know, except for the air turn-back, there is no new development,” Mr. Tengku Sariffuddin, adding that the reported remarks by the air force chief were “not true.” 
 
 Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, offered a third account. In a statement, the airline said authorities were “looking at a possibility” that the plane had turned around to head for Subang, an airport outside Kuala Lumpur that handles mainly domestic flights. 
 
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 So far only the basic facts of the first 40 minutes of Flight 370 are well established. The plane, a Boeing 777, left Kuala Lumpur’s main international airport about 12:40 a.m. local time with 239 people aboard, bound for Beijing. By 1:21 it was about midway between the Malaysian peninsula and the southern coast of Vietnam, cruising at 35,000 feet in good weather under a moonless sky, when the transponder on the plane stopped transmitting data to Flightradar24, a global tracking system for commercial aircraft. Malaysia Airlines has said that ground controllers had their last radio communication with the pilots about 1:30 a.m., but it has not given a precise time. 
 
 Without specifying why, the Malaysian authorities vastly expanded the search area to the west on Monday, implying that they believed there was a strong chance the plane had traveled there. No similar expansion was made to the east or the south. 
 
 If the flight traveled west over Peninsular Malaysia, as the air force chief was quoted saying, it would have flown very close to one of Flightradar’s beacons in the city of Kota Bharu. But Mikael Robertsson, the co-founder of Flightradar24, said the jet never sent a signal to that receiver, which means that if the plane did fly that way, its transponder had either been knocked out of service by damage or had been shut down. 
 
 “We see every aircraft that flies over there, even if it’s very, very low, so if it flew over there, the transponder was off,” he said. 
 
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 A pilot can turn off the transponder, Mr. Robertsson said, and the fact that the last contact from the transponder and the last radio contact with the pilots came at roughly the same time suggests that that is what happened. “I guess to me it sounds like they were turned off deliberately,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Robertsson said that since the plane had been fully fueled for a trip to Beijing, it could have traveled a great distance beyond its last reported position. “The aircraft could have continued another five or six hours out into the ocean,” he said. “It could have gone to India.” 
 
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 Malaysian officials said they have not ruled out any possible explanation for the airplane’s disappearance — not mechanical failure, pilot error, crew malfeasance, hijacking, terrorism or anything else. The absence of physical evidence from the aircraft or even knowledge of its location left plenty of scope for speculation, including questions about two men who boarded the plane using stolen passports and one-way tickets bought in Thailand. Interpol officials said on Tuesday that it appeared most likely that the two men were illegal migrants with no link to terrorism. 
 
 In Washington, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan, said on Tuesday that the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the Transportation Security Administration were all trying to learn more about the plane’s disappearance. 
 
 “Our Malaysian counterparts are doing everything they can to try to put together the pieces here, but clearly there’s still a mystery, which is very disturbing,” Mr. Brennan said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations. Asked about terrorism as a potential cause, he said: “I wouldn’t rule it out. Not at all.” 
 
 The Malaysian government’s inconsistencies in the handling of the crisis were further highlighted Tuesday when the country’s chief of police said there had been no baggage removed from the aircraft before takeoff, contradicting what officials had said for the past three days. 
 
 Khalid Abu Bakar, the inspector general of the Malaysian police, said previous reports by Malaysian officials that five passengers had failed to board the flight and that their baggage had been removed were false. “Everybody that booked the flight boarded the plane,” he said. 
 
 But Malaysia Airlines later issued a clarification, saying that there were four passengers who booked tickets on the flight but failed to check in at the airport or check any bags for the flight. ||||| Story highlights Japan to join 8 other nations in search, ministry says 
 
 Plane's transponder had stopped, Malaysian Air Force official says 
 
 Missing flight was way off course, heading in wrong direction, official says 
 
 Experts unsure on what caused transponder to go off, what it means for plane 
 
 It was 1:30 a.m. when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 lost all communications, including important transponder signals that send data on altitude, direction and speed. Still, it showed up on radar for about 1 hour, 10 minutes longer -- until it vanished, having apparently moved away from its intended destination, hundreds of miles off course. 
 
 Those details -- told to CNN by a senior Malaysian air force official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media -- seemingly shed more light on what happened to the aircraft that mysteriously went missing early Saturday. 
 
 But if these assertions are true -- and other reports, citing a different Malaysian official, cast doubt on them -- many big questions remain. Why were the communications lost? Why was the Boeing 777 going the direction it was? And where did it end up? 
 
 "Something happened to that airplane, that was obviously out of the norm, that caused it to depart from its normal flight path," said Mark Weiss, a former 777 pilot now with the Washington-based Spectrum Group consulting firm. "... It's difficult not to speculate." 
 
 Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, thinks all this information -- if correct -- ominously suggests that someone purposefully cut off the transponder and steered the plane from its intended destination. 
 
 "This kind of deviation in course is simply inexplicable," said Goelz. 
 
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 Other experts aren't convinced that there were bad actors -- be they hijackers or an ill-intentioned crew member. They say there could have been some sort of sudden catastrophic electronic failure or more that spurred the crew to try to turn around, with no luck. 
 
 "Perhaps there was a power problem," said veteran pilot Kit Darby, former president of Aviation Information Resources, adding that backup power systems would only last about an hour. "(It is) natural for the pilot, in my view, to return to where he knows the airports." 
 
 Still, while they have theories, even those who have piloted massive commercial airliners like this one admit that they can't conclude anything until the plane is found. For now, the massive multinational search has yielded no breakthrough -- which has only added to the heartache for the friends and family of the 239 passengers and crew on board. 
 
 The Malaysian air force official's revelations may provide more direction, though clarity and closure are still elusive. 
 
 "There are still as many possibilities out there, maybe more, now that we know about the transponders being off and the length of time that plane flew in the air without them," said CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes. "It still leaves mechanical, terrorism (and) other issues as much in the air as they were before." 
 
 Intentional or catastrophic mechanical failure? 
 
 According to the Malaysian air force official, the plane's transponder apparently stopped working at about the time flight controllers lost contact with it, near the coast of Vietnam. 
 
 The air force eventually and totally lost track of the plane over Pulau Perak, a tiny island in the Strait of Malacca -- many hundreds of miles from the usual flight path for aircraft traveling between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, the official said. 
 
 If the data cited by the source is correct, the aircraft was flying away from Beijing and on the opposite side of the Malay Peninsula from its scheduled route. 
 
 Why would the transponder -- an electrical instrument in commercial airline cockpits that continuously transmits information such as altitude, location, direction and speed -- have gone off? 
 
 Goelz, the former NTSB managing director, and others point out the only reason for someone to intentionally turn off the transponder is to conceal the plane's location and direction. Someone with nefarious intentions of taking over an aircraft and steering it to where it wasn't supposed to be -- or perhaps planning on crashing it -- might do just that. 
 
 "You have to have a very deliberate process to turn the transponder off," he said. "... There might still be mechanical explanations on what was going on, but those mechanical explanations are narrowing quickly." 
 
 Anthony Roman, a trained pilot and consultant, said that a fast-moving fire might have moved through the cockpit and rendered everything, including the crew, effectively powerless to do much more than turn the plane around. 
 
 "Fires are insidious," Roman told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "They can happen quickly and knock out multiple systems quickly." 
 
 Darby, for one, believes purely mechanical issues remain the most valid possibility now. His main point is: "Everything is electrical." In other words, if there's some sort of "catastrophic failure" for whatever reason, that could knock out systems like the transponder. 
 
 If that would happen, the plane could fly for some time without electricity but not indefinitely. Any attempts to steer it would be harder in the dark without functioning flight instruments said Darby, a retired United captain. 
 
 Whether the air force official's account is true, that possibility and others make the mystery more and more confounding. 
 
 Photos: The search for MH370 Photos: The search for MH370 In late February 2016, American tourist Blaine Gibson found a piece of plane debris off Mozambique, a discovery that renewed hope of solving the mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The piece measures 35 inches by 22 inches. A U.S. official said it was likely the wreckage came from a Boeing 777, like MH370. Others were more skeptical. Hide Caption 1 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 On July 29, police carry a piece of debris on Reunion Island , a French territory in the Indian Ocean. A week later, authorities confirmed that the debris was from MH370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 2 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Relatives of the flight's passengers console each other outside the Malaysia Airlines office in Subang, Malaysia, on February 12, 2015. Protesters had demanded that the airline withdraw the statement that all 239 people aboard the plane were dead. Hide Caption 3 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A police officer watches a couple cry outside the airline's office building in Beijing after officials refused to meet with them on June 11, 2014. The couple's son was on the plane. Hide Caption 4 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of the media scramble to speak with Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department, at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 27, 2014. Data from communications between satellites and the missing flight was released the day before, more than two months after relatives of passengers said they requested it be made public. Hide Caption 5 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Operators aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield move Bluefin-21, the U.S. Navy's autonomous underwater vehicle, into position to search for the jet on April 14, 2014. Hide Caption 6 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks out of a window while searching for debris off the coast of western Australia on April 13, 2014. Hide Caption 7 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 The HMS Echo, a vessel with the British Roya; Navy, moves through the waters of the southern Indian Ocean on April 12, 2014. Hide Caption 8 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion, on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the search, flies past the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 9, 2014. Hide Caption 9 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A relative of a missing passenger cries at a vigil in Beijing on April 8, 2014. Hide Caption 10 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Australian Defense Force divers scan the water for debris in the southern Indian Ocean on April 7, 2014. Hide Caption 11 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A towed pinger locator is readied to be deployed off the deck of the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 7, 2014. Hide Caption 12 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks at a flare in the Indian Ocean during search operations on April 4, 2014. Hide Caption 13 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 On March 30, 2014, a woman in Kuala Lumpur prepares for an event in honor of those aboard Flight 370. Hide Caption 14 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 The sole representative for the families of Flight 370 passengers leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on March 28, 2014, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions. Hide Caption 15 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 16 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 17 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 People in Kuala Lumpur light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 18 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight on March 24, 2014. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." Hide Caption 19 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24, 2014. Hide Caption 20 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 22, 2014. Hide Caption 21 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, 2014, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It was a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes were looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia. Hide Caption 22 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on March 20, 2014, showed debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could have been from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search. Hide Caption 23 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight. Hide Caption 24 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 19, 2014. Hide Caption 25 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 On March 18, 2014, a relative of a missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet. Hide Caption 26 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations in the Indian Ocean on March 16, 2014. Hide Caption 27 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on March 13, 2014. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, search efforts expanded west into the Indian Ocean. Hide Caption 28 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13, 2014. Hide Caption 29 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian air force members look for debris near Kuala Lumpur on March 13, 2014. Hide Caption 30 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12, 2014. Hide Caption 31 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on March 11, 2014. Hide Caption 32 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported on March 8, 2014. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10, 2014. Hide Caption 33 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews on March 9, 2014, before returning to search for the missing plane in the Gulf of Thailand. Hide Caption 34 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 35 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 36 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 37 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 38 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 39 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 40 of 41 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference at a hotel in Sepang on March 8, 2014. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. Hide Caption 41 of 41 
 
 JUST WATCHED Questions swirl after airliner vanishes Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Questions swirl after airliner vanishes 01:57 
 
 "You couldn't make this story up," said Michael Goldfarb, a former official with the Federal Aviation Administration. 
 
 Terrorism a possibility 
 
 Authorities have said they're looking at all possibilities to explain what happened to the Malaysia Airlines aircraft. 
 
 Earlier Tuesday, the head of the international police organization Interpol said that his agency increasingly believed the incident was not related to terrorism. 
 
 "The more information we get, the more we're inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference in Lyon, France. 
 
 Yet -- speaking Tuesday about what he called a "very disturbing mystery" -- CIA Director John Brennan insisted terrorism remains a possibility. 
 
 "I don't know (what happened)," he said. "But I don't think people should, at this point, rule out any of these lines of inquiry." 
 
 The two passengers who have dominated headlines the last two days entered Malaysia using valid Iranian passports, Noble said. But they used stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board the missing Malaysian plane, he said. 
 
 Noble gave their names and ages as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29. 
 
 Malaysian police had earlier identified Nourmohammadi, using a slightly different name and age, and said they believed he was trying to migrate to Germany. 
 
 Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar of the Royal Malaysian Police said it doesn't appear the younger Iranian posed a threat. 
 
 "We have been checking his background," Khalid said, noting "other police organizations" have been consulted. "And we believe that he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said. 
 
 After he failed to arrive in Frankfurt, the final destination of his ticket, his mother contacted authorities, Khalid said. According to ticketing records, the ticket to Frankfurt was booked under the stolen Austrian passport. 
 
 Extensive search for plane 
 
 No one knows where these two men and the other 237 people on the plane ended up. Every lead that has raised hopes of tracing the commercial jet has so far petered out. 
 
 Over the past few days, search teams have been scouring tens of thousands of square miles of sea between the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest Vietnam. They have also been searching off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Strait of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea. 
 
 The search also encompasses the land in between the two areas of sea. 
 
 But it could be days, weeks or even months before the searchers find anything that begins to explain what happened to the plane, which disappeared early Saturday en route to Beijing. 
 
 In the case of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009, it took five days just to find the first floating wreckage. 
 
 And it was nearly two years before investigators found the bulk of the French plane's wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228 people on board, about 12,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. 
 
 The Gulf of Thailand, the area where the missing Malaysian plane was last detected, is much shallower, with a maximum depth of only 260 feet and an average depth of about 150 feet. 
 
 Still, they have to find it first. The newly disclosed revelation about the plane's direction doesn't help, as it means less certainty and more time for currents to move the wreckage around. 
 
 "Crucial time is passing," David Gallo, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday. "That search area -- that haystack -- is getting bigger and bigger and bigger." 
 
 Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, the United States, China and Malaysia are all taking part in the search, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Japan has also dispatched a team to the area, with Japanese military and coast guard crews likely to follow, its foreign ministry announced Wednesday. 
 
 JUST WATCHED New details fuel missing flight theories Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH New details fuel missing flight theories 01:33 
 
 JUST WATCHED Men with stolen passports identified Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Men with stolen passports identified 01:28 
 
 That helps takes all forms, such as many as 10 Chinese satellites monitoring the area to the helicopters ready-to-dispatch off of U.S. warships. 
 
 CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest described the search as "extremely painstaking work," suggesting a grid would have been drawn over the ocean for teams to comb, bit by bit. 
 
 Quest said that the expanding search area shows how little idea rescue officials have of where the plane might be. But he's still confident they'll find it eventually. 
 
 "It's not hopeless, by any means. They will find it," he said. "They have to. They have to know what happened." 
 
 Until they do, patience is growing thin for friends and family members of those aboard Flight 370. 
 
 As a middle-aged man -- the father of one such passenger -- shouted Tuesday at an airline agent in Beijing: "Time is passing by."
– This would at least explain why the search for the missing Malaysian jet has expanded to the west of late: An anonymous air force official from that nation says the plane may have ended up hundreds of miles from its expected flight path, reports CNN. Specifically, the report puts the jet's last known location in the Straits of Malacca above a small island called Pulau Perak. If true, it suggests the plane turned west about an hour after takeoff instead of heading northeast toward Vietnam. (Earlier reports speculated that the plane might have tried to turn back.) The AP has a similar account, adding that another air force official thinks the plane was flying low over Pulau Perak. But there "were conflicting accounts of the course change and what may have happened afterward, adding to the air of confusion and disarray surrounding the investigation and search operation," observes the New York Times. If the plane did indeed fly over the Straits of Malacca, its transponder likely had been damaged or deliberately shut off by that point, because no signal was detected. Reuters quotes a non-military official as saying the new report is just one of several theories being investigated. Click to read about others.