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These are the 634 runways where the missing Malaysia Airlines plane could have landed after a potential hijacking.

Today the Australian search team ended its mission in the Indian Ocean and concluded the area can now be "discounted as the final resting place of the plane".

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Investigators must now go back to square one in their quest to establish what happened to passenger jet carrying 239 people.

Shortly after the Boeing 777 first disappeared, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said it was believed flight MH370's disappearance was the result of 'deliberate action' by someone on the plane.

During a dramatic press conference, he said satellite evidence showed the aircraft's transponder was turned off and it change direction shortly before it vanished.

It is estimated that the jet had enough fuel to have flown around another 2,200 miles after it vanished.

WYNC Data Team said based on the size of the plane, there are 634 runways where it could potentially have landed.

They are spread from as far north as Pakistan, to as far south as the west coast of Australia or even Japan.

Other remote locations include Micronesia, Mongolia and the Maldives.

Prime Minister Razak stopped short of saying the aircraft had been hijacked, but his 'deliberate action' comments pointed towards foul play.

He said: "Based on new satellite communication we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communication addressing system was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of Malaysia.

"Shortly afterwards between the border of Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control the aircraft's transponder was switched off.

"Radar data showed that from this point onwards a plane believed to be MH370 did turn back and turned back in a westerly direction before turning north west.

"These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane."

The underwater search for the airliner will be suspended for a couple of months while more powerful sonar equipment is brought in to search a much wider area based on analysis of satellite data of the plane's most likely course.

That analysis has led authorities to believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 diverted sharply from its flight path and flew south to the Indian Ocean.

But not a single piece of the missing Boeing 777 has been found in one of aviation's most baffling mysteries.

The news comes after the US Navy dismissed an American expert's reported comments that acoustic "pings" heard in April did not come from the jet's black boxes.

CNN reported that the Navy's civilian deputy director of ocean engineering, Michael Dean, said most countries now agreed that the sounds detected by the Navy's Towed Pinger Locator came from a man-made source unrelated to the jet.

"Mike Dean's comments today were speculative and premature, as we continue to work with our partners to more thoroughly understand the data acquired by the Towed Pinger Locator," US Navy spokesman Chris Johnson said in a statement, referring to Australia and Malaysia.