No trace of the Beijing-bound aircraft has been found since it disappeared on 8 March 2014.

Officials said that the recovery operation is ongoing but that the 239 people onboard are now presumed dead.

The plane’s whereabouts are still unknown despite a massive international search in the southern Indian Ocean.

The declaration on Thursday should allow compensation payments to relatives of the victims.

Malaysian officials added that the recovery of the missing aircraft remained a priority and that they have pursued “every credible lead”.

Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) Director-General Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said that it was “with the heaviest heart and deepest sorrow that we officially declare Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 an accident.”

“All 239 of the passengers and crew onboard MH370 are presumed to have lost their lives,” he said.

He added that Malaysia, China and Australia have spared no expense in the hunt for the plane.

Four vessels are currently searching the sea floor with specialised sonar technology in a remote stretch of ocean where the plane is believed to have ended its flight.

Based on analysis of satellite and aircraft performance data, MH370 is thought to be in seas far west of the Australian city of Perth.

The vessels have so far searched an area of over 18,000 km sq (11,185 sq miles), according to officials.

The search area involved also has known depths of up to 6,000 m (19 685 ft).

Azharuddin said that the progress of the safety investigation into the accident would be released soon, but that “at this juncture, there is no evidence to substantiate any speculations as to the cause of the accident”.

The DCA said on Wednesday said that it planned to release an interim report on the investigation on 7 March, a day before the first anniversary of the disappearance.

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The massive search has drawn in navies, military aircraft, coastguard and civilian vessels from 10 nations, but failed to turn up any trace of the Boeing 777-200ER that vanished about an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday.

“Until now, with all of our efforts, there is very little hope for any good news about this plane,” said the head of Vietnam’s search and rescue effort, Pham Quy Tieu.

The search was widened on Tuesday to a larger swathe of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, around where the plane lost radio contact and vanished from radar screens.

But searches were also being conducted on the western coast of Malaysia and up northwest towards the Andaman Sea – based on a theory that the plane may have flown on for some time after deviating from its flight path.

Even that information has not been clearly confirmed, and investigators and intelligence sources say the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is still shrouded in mystery.

Interpol said on Sunday at least two passengers on board had used stolen passports, raising suspicions of foul play. But Southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers.

Police in Thailand, where the passports were stolen and the tickets used by the two men carrying them were booked, said on Tuesday they did not think they were linked to the disappearance of the plane.

“We haven’t ruled it out, but the weight of evidence we’re getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism,” Supachai Puikaewcome, chief of police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, told Reuters.

Neither Malaysia’s Special Branch, the agency leading the investigation, nor spy agencies in the United States and Europe, have ruled out the possibility of a hijack or bombing.

But Malaysian authorities have indicated the evidence so far does not strongly back an attack as a cause for the aircraft’s disappearance, and that mechanical or pilot problems could have led to the apparent crash, U.S. government sources said.

“There is no evidence to suggest an act of terror,” said a European security source, who added that there was also “no explanation what’s happened to it or where it is”.

The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a U.S. government source said.

“Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority And the chief investigator, said on Monday.

“As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft. We have to find a piece of the aircraft if possible.”

Azharuddin said a hijacking attempt could not be ruled out as investigators explore all theories.

He also said the two men with stolen passports did not appear to be of Asian origin, but did not elaborate. Airport CCTV footage showed they completed all security procedures, he said.

“We are looking at the possibility of a stolen passport syndicate,” he said.

Vietnam said it was allowing ships and planes from Malaysia, Singapore, China and the United States to enter its waters to search for the plane.

Five ships and two aircraft were investigating a report of “large metal debris” spotted off southern Vietnam by a Cathay Pacific plane en route to Kuala Lumpur from Hong Kong, but had not been able to confirm any wreckage, authorities said.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. Other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

China has deployed 10 satellites using high-resolution earth imaging capabilities, visible light imaging and other technologies to “support and assist in the search and rescue operations”, the People’s Liberation Army Daily said on Tuesday.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

US planemaker has Boeing declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation.

No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said suggested a sudden catastrophic failure or explosion, but Malaysia’s air force chief said radar tracking showed it may have turned back from its scheduled route before it disappeared.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand during the past two years. Interpol said the use of stolen passports was “of great concern”.

Thai police said the tickets had been booked in Pattaya, a raucous resort south of Bangkok, by two Iranian men whom they identified as “Hasem” and “Kazem Ali”.

“We’re looking into all angles including the possibility that these men were involved in human smuggling, as Ali had a relationship with the travel agency and had booked through them previously, very possibly for Iranian nationals,” Pattaya police chief Supachai said.

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The head of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said a hijacking could not be ruled out as investigators explore all theories for the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 en route to Beijing.

“Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he told a news conference.

“As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft, we have to find a piece of the aircraft if possible.”

As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over possible security lapses and whether a bomb or hijacking could have brought down the Boeing airliner.

Interpol confirmed on Sunday at least two passengers used stolen passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used false identity documents.

Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft.

A Vietnamese navy plane reported seeing what could have been a piece of the aircraft as darkness fell across the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea on Sunday, but ships and aircraft returning in daylight have so far found nothing.

Underlining the lack of hard information about the plane’s fate, a U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft capable of covering 1,500 sq miles every hour was sweeping the northern part of the Strait of Malacca on Monday, on the other side of the Malay peninsula from where the last contact with MH370 was made.

“Our aircraft are able to clearly detect small debris in the water, but so far it has all been trash or wood,” said U.S. 7th Fleet spokesman Commander William Marks in an emailed statement.

Shares in Malaysia Airlines fell as much as 18 percent to a record low on Monday morning.

No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said suggested a sudden catastrophic failure or explosion, but Malaysia’s air force chief said radar tracking showed it may have turned back from its scheduled route before it disappeared.

A senior source involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia said the failure to quickly find any debris indicated the plane may have broken up mid-flight, which could disperse wreckage over a very wide area.

“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” said the source.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.

Still, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.

The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by American spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a U.S. government source said. The source described US satellite coverage of the region as thorough.

Boeing declined to comment and referred to its brief earlier statement that said it was monitoring the situation.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. The airline said other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans – Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi – who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more “suspect passports”, which were being investigated.

“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said.

Malaysia’s state news agency quoted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the two passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance, and criticized the border officials who let them through.

“I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian but with Asian faces,” he was quoted as saying late on Sunday.

A European diplomat in Kuala Lumpur cautioned that the Malaysian capital was an Asian hub for illegal migrants, many of whom used false documents and complex routes including via Beijing or West Africa to reach a final destination in Europe.

“You shouldn’t automatically think that the fact there were two people on the plane with false passports had anything to do with the disappearance of the plane,” the diplomat said.

“The more you know about the role of Kuala Lumpur in this chain, the more doubtful you are of the chances of a linkage.”

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