KUALA LUMPUR: 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.

“The aircraft is still missing, and the search area is expanding,” said Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

“Together with our international partners, we are pushing further east into the South China Sea and further into the Indian Ocean.”

Hishammuddin said he could offer no new information on the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared from radar screens over Southeast Asia last Saturday, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew.

He also refused to be drawn on US media reports in which unidentified American officials said the Boeing 777 may have flown for an additional four or five hours after vanishing from civilian radar.

They said a satellite had continued to detect the plane’s communication system long after it vanished from radar between Malaysia and Vietnam, fuelling speculation the plane might have banked west off its intended path and headed to the Indian Ocean.

A US Navy official told AFP the destroyer USS Kidd had been sent toward the Indian Ocean to investigate the latest in a series of tantalising leads that have pulled the search in multiple directions and deepened one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.

“A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, as new information focuses the search,” said Hishammuddin.

“But this is not a normal investigation,” he said, adding that the lack of success in the search so far “forces us to look further and further afield.”

A total of 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were now deployed across the entire search zone, he added.

The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest with an average depth of nearly 3,900 meters (12,800 feet).

It is like going “from a chessboard to a football field”, Commander William Marks of the US 7th Fleet told CNN.

White House spokesman Jay Carney had appeared to support the US media reports of a potential Indian Ocean breakthrough, citing “new information” but added that it was “not necessarily conclusive.”

Dressed in his traditional Malay Islamic dress and oval cap following Friday prayers, Hishammuddin refused to comment on the host of theories swirling around the plane’s fate.

“Anything is possible” he said, stressing that he would only confirm what could be verified.

The lack of results from the investigation has created a volatile mix of grief, anger, frustration and speculation that the Malaysian authorities have struggled to control.

The government has stressed the “unprecedented” nature of the challenge, with the search parameters expanding daily and the focus swinging wildly from the east to the west of the Malaysian peninsula.

“It’s almost got to the point where it gets more confusing with each day that goes by. That’s really atypical of an investigation,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.

The Boeing 777 vanished early Saturday over the South China Sea with no indication of distress. The night was clear and the weather was fine. The plane has one of the best safety records of any jet, and the airline also has a solid record.

“There are so many stories swirling around. This morning one man told me the plane had landed in Africa,” said Subramaniam Gurusamy, a 60-year-old Malaysian security guard whose son was on the flight.

“How am I going to explain to my grandchildren that nobody knows where their father is?” he told AFP.

Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the plane still clung to hopes Friday that the aircraft might have been hijacked and their loved ones could somehow still be alive.

Emotions ran high in Beijing as the relatives met airline officials and demanded answers from Malaysian military and search-and-rescue officials about the missing plane.

The Beijing-bound flight from Kuala Lumpur disappeared off radar last Saturday with 239 people aboard -- 153 of them Chinese -- and multinational efforts have failed to find any remains.

“We want to know if there is any possibility that it has been hijacked, which is now what we all hope for most,” said one woman.

Her relatives had travelled to the Malaysian capital to be closer to the search operation but were not receiving satisfactory updates from the airline, she said.

Malaysia Airlines commercial director Hugh Dunleavy said they would attempt to meet relatives’ demands to meet Malaysian military officials.

But another woman responded furiously, saying: “You are always delaying, always delaying, we have waited so long for you to answer our questions.”

The focus in the jet search has expanded into the Indian Ocean from an initial hunt in the South China Sea and adjacent Gulf of Thailand, where known radar contact with the plane ended.

About 300 relatives were crammed into a room -- more commonly used for weddings -- at a hotel where the airline was providing regular updates.

Some relatives interrupted their own questions halfway through, bursting out sobbing, while others stayed silent, occasionally staring at the mobile phones frantically seeking news updates. Many simply sat head bowed, linking arms with a nearby relative.

A flustered man whose 57-year-old mother had been on board the flight said all the relatives were “impatient” with the lack of information.

“I am sitting in front of the television and using my mobile phone to search for the latest news on the Internet,” he said.

Yet a man surnamed Gao found hope despite the enormous stretch of sea to be searched.

“We are racing against time, if the search area is increased soon, then our family members’ chances of survival will rise,” he said, clasping his hands together as he spoke passionately.

“We are asking more nations to get involved in the rescue of this unparalleled catastrophe.”