The head of the House's Homeland Security Committee said he fears the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may have been hijacked by terrorists for use as a weapon in the future.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News he thinks there are two plausible scenarios for what happened to the plane, which disappeared over the South China Sea March 8. Despite an exhaustive search, there has been no sign of the Boeing 777 or its 239 passengers.

The first scenario is that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean. The other, McCaul said, was the plane landed "somewhere in southeast Asia" as part of a terror plot.

"It could have landed somewhere, filled with explosives and then sent somewhere else to cause some great damage, and I think we have to look at all possibilities right now," McCaul told Fox News. "From a terror standpoint, either somebody on that plane, or the pilots, attempted to hijack it, but then what would be the purpose behind crashing it into the ocean?"

The FBI is among those investigating the plane's disappearance and investigators have looked at everything from mechanical failure to pilot suicide. Reports that at least two passengers on the plane were traveling with stolen passports raised concerns the plane may have been hijacked or destroyed by terrorists.

If the plane landed in Indonesia, McCaul said, "it could be used later on as a cruise missile, as the 9/11 hijackers did. That's something we have to use our imagination in these situations."