Kuala Lumpur: The missing Malaysia Airlines plane flew for one hour and 10 minutes after Malaysian aviation authorities saw it vanish from radar over the South China Sea and travelled hundreds of kilometres off course, according to a senior Malaysian air force official quoted by CNN.

According to the official, who had asked not to be named, the plane flew in the opposite direction from its scheduled flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with its communications equipment turned off and was last seen over a tiny island called Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca.

Why the pilot would be travelling in the wrong direction deepens the mystery about the fate of the plane but raises the possibility of a hijacking or technical fault that caused the pilots to not know what direction they were flying.