Malaysian authorities deny missing jet kept flying

The Malaysian jet that vanished without a trace on Saturday did not continue flying for hours after its last confirmed location, authorities said Thursday, dashing yet another possible lead in the baffling mystery.

The Wall Street Journal had reported that US investigators and national security officials based their belief that the plane kept flying on data transmitted to the ground from the jet’s engines.

But Malaysia’s acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that the report was “inaccurate,” based on information from other investigators.

“With every passing day the task becomes more difficult,” Hishammuddin said Thursday.

Malaysian officials consulted with the plane’s manufacturers, who told them that no transmissions of any kind were receivedafter air traffic controllers abruptly lost contact with it, CNN reported.

The report suggested that perhaps the plane had been hijacked by someone who turned off its transmitters – but Hussein shot that theory down.

But early Thursday, Malaysia’s civil-aviation chief said a search of the site turned up no debris.

“There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

And Chinese authorities later said that the release of the satellite images was a mistake and that they didn’t show any debris relating to the plane, Hussein said.

Although the fate of the jet has devolved into one of the world’s great mysteries, authorities said that everything appeared to be normal on board Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 minutes before it went missing over the South China sea early Saturday.

“All right, roger that,” a pilot replied to a radio message from Malaysian air control.

The jet’s last communication was revealed by Malaysian officials at a news conference held in Beijing for relatives of the 154 Chinese citizens among the missing passengers.

The updates came as an oil-rig worker claimed he saw a jet go down off the southeast coast of Vietnam.

In an e-mail sent to his employer, the worker describes seeing what he believes to be the missing Boeing 777 burning in one piece at high altitude, flying perpendicular to the standard jet routes that cross over the area.

“I believe I saw the Malaysian Airlines plane come down,” the man writes, according to an e-mail obtained and tweeted by ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff.

According to Woodruff, Vietnamese officials confirmed they received the e-mail but found nothing in the water.