The US has sent surveillance teams to the Indian Ocean to help search for the missing Malaysian plane, after claims emerged that it may have flown for longer than investigators had thought.
Unnamed officials said the plane sent signals to satellites for up to five hours after its apparent disappearance.
However, investigators said the data were not conclusive and Malaysia refused to comment on the claims.
Flight MH370 vanished last Saturday with 239 people on board.
The plane, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, last made contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia.
But several US media reports on Thursday cited unnamed officials as saying that the Boeing 777 was “pinging” satellites for hours after its last contact with air-traffic controllers.
That led searchers to believe the plane could have flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar sighting.
The US, which is one of a number of countries helping in the search for the plane, has now sent a navy destroyer and a sophisticated surveillance aircraft to the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles west of Malaysia, BBC informs.
