SEPANG, March 17 — Authorities are looking into the possibility that one of the two pilots aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have tried to commit suicide, as investigations delve deeper into the crew’s backgrounds.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed the angle in a news conference here today, 10 days after a worldwide hunt failed to find the Boeing 777-200 jumbo jet carrying 239 people on board.

“Yes, we’re looking at it,” Hishammuddin told reporters, when asked if the investigation was delving into possible pilot suicide.

However, the minister declined to elaborate if either Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had personal problems.

MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, who was also at the press conference, said that the flag carrier may tighten entry requirements for pilots in future.

“Psychometric tests are standard procedure for pilots,” he said.

Ahmad Jauhari also denied claims of a last-minute switch of pilots for MH370 and stressed that Zaharie was rostered to fly that Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8.

The investigation into the plane that vanished without a trace more than a week ago has been classified by Malaysian authorities under Section 130C of the Penal Code, which deals with hijacking, sabotage and acts of terrorism.

International news wire Associated Press (AP) reported today that pilot suicide appears to be a taboo subject, as officials and investigators are reluctant to admit that a pilot purposely crashed the plane in order to kill themselves.

In 1999, US investigators concluded that co-pilot Gameel El-Batouty on EgyptAir Flight 990 — which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people aboard — had switched off the auto-pilot upon finding himself alone on the flight deck, pointed the plane downward, and calmly repeated the phrase “I rely on God” 11 times.

The SilkAir Flight 185 that plunged into a river in 1997 and killed all 104 aboard, while enroute from Jakarta to Singapore, was also found by US investigators to be a deliberate crash, though an Indonesian probe was inconclusive.

International news agency Associated Press quoted a 2014 study by the US Federal Aviation Administration that showed pilot suicide to be a phenomenon in the United States, occurring in just 0.3 per cent of fatal aviation accidents in the country during the 10 years ending in 2012.