Last week's discovery of a two-meter-long wing part called a flaperon, apparently from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, has provided the first glimmer of hope for relatives desperate for answers in what remains one of the biggest mysteries in the history of aviation.

Authorities hunting for missing flight MH370 are "increasingly confident" that wreckage found on an Indian Ocean island is from the ill-fated jet, the Australian official leading the search said Friday.

Malaysia said Monday its missing airliner had crashed in the Indian Ocean, extinguishing the hopes of relatives of those on board but shedding no light on why it veered so far off course. A sombre Prime Minister Najib Razak said a new analysis of satellite data on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370's path placed its last position in remote waters off Australia's west coast, "far from any possible landing sites."

A missing Malaysian airliner was apparently deliberately diverted and flown for hours after vanishing from radar, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday, stopping short of confirming a hijack but taking the excruciating search for the jet into uncharted new territory.

Some airline pilots have begun to speculate that one of the flight crew might have intentionally caused the plane to disappear and flown off with it to an undisclosed location.

Malaysia said Friday it was dramatically expanding the already vast scope of its search for a missing passenger plane, admitting it was no closer to solving the agonizing aviation mystery a week after the jet vanished.

Vietnam said its search planes spotted oil slicks in the sea near where a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people mysteriously vanished on Saturday, in the first hint at the aircraft's possible fate.