Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 descended to as low as 3,700 meters as it headed toward the Malacca Strait, according to an unnamed Malaysian official quoted by the US news network CNN.   This happened after the plane took that sharp turn to the west, deviating from its planned course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

239 people including six Australians have not been seen since the plane seemingly vanished from all forms of detection early in the morning on 8 March.  The official says the descent occurred between 1:19 AM and 2:40 AM.  The area is a heavily trafficked air corridor, and flying that low would have kept it out of the way of the other planes, assuming that this was in anyway planned.  The flight crew did not trigger an alarm that would alert the ground of a fire in the cockpit.

Earlier, Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing aircraft's reporting system showed it was heading to Beijing.  That might undercut the theory that someone in the cockpit reprogrammed the flight computer before the co-pilot signed off with air-traffic controllers for the last time.  But it might not – there’s no airplane to examine to confirm these little changes in the timeline of events.

And, a new data from a French satellite shows potential debris from the missing 777-200ER in the southern Indian Ocean.  France's foreign ministry says that radar echoes had picked up several objects about 2,300km from Perth.