Someone in cockpit may have plotted MH370 flight paths to Australia: Investigators

Someone in the cockpit of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 might have plotted at least four different potential flight paths, three of them to Australia, feel investigators.

Releasing a a comprehensive 64-page report outlining the basis on which this new search area had been defined, the investigators believe that flight routes were programmed for Port Hedland, Adelaide and Perth.

The fourth destined flight path was programmed for the Cocos Island, which is 2750 km north-west of Perth, reports news.com.au.

The plane, which was on auto-pilot, disappeared from air traffic control radar screens on March 8 this year, and Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators have said that the hunt for MH370 would shift further south.

The report provides the most thorough detail about what might have happened to MH370 and the 239 people aboard.

Authorities believe MH370 turned left before entering Vietnamese air space and tracked along the Malacca Strait before making a southern turn at the north-west tip of Sumatra, Indonesia.

The report identified southern air routes that MH370 may have intersected or traversed after deviating from its flight-planned route to Beijing.