KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia denied Wednesday that the hunt for a missing jet was in disarray, after the search veered far from the planned route and China said that conflicting information about its course was “pretty chaotic.”

Meanwhile, one new detail did emerge — the words of MH370’s final radio transmission.

Malaysia’s ambassador to China, Iskandar Sarudin, said one of the pilots said “alright, good night” as the flight switched from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace.

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s Civil Aviation chief, later confirmed to AFP that those were the last words from the cockpit.

Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia would “never give up hope” of finding the plane’s 239 passengers and crew, dismissing allegations that efforts were mired in confusion after a series of false alarms, rumors and contradictory statements.

“I don’t think so. It’s far from it. It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion,” he said at a press conference, where military and civilian officials faced a grilling from a combative crowd of journalists.

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 now encompasses nearly 27,000 nautical miles and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.

The search focus had been on an area off Vietnam’s South China Sea coast, where it last made contact Saturday on a journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But Malaysian authorities said Wednesday they were expanding it to the Andaman Sea, north of Indonesia, hundreds of miles away.

“So right now there is a lot of information, and it’s pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had difficulty confirming whether it is accurate or not,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said of accounts of the jet’s course. There were 153 Chinese nationals on the flight.

India’s coastguard joined the aerial search off the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands Wednesday and the Indian Air Force was put on standby.

Malaysian Air Force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud explained why the search zone had been expanded, telling the press conference that military radar detected an unidentified object early Saturday north of the Malacca Strait off Malaysia’s west coast.

He said that the reading, taken less than an hour after the plane lost contact over the South China Sea, was still being investigated and they were not able to confirm it was MH370.

The confusion has fueled perceptions that Malaysian authorities are unable to handle a crisis on this scale, and infuriated relatives.

Analysts said there were burning questions over what information — if any — Malaysia has gleaned from both military and civilian radar, and the Boeing 777’s transponders, and over discounted reports it was later detected near Indonesia.

Frustrations boiled over in Malaysia, with the country’s active social media and some press outlets turning from sympathy for the families of relatives to anger over the fruitless search.

“The mood among Malaysians now is moving from patience... to embarrassment and anger over discrepancies about passengers, offloaded baggage and concealed information about its last known position,” Malaysian Insider, a leading news portal, said in a commentary.

Twitter users took aim at the web of contradictory information that has fueled conspiracy theories.