KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 — The missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was programmed to fly to Beijing, its group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said today as he dismissed as speculation reports suggesting the plane’s flight route could have been changed later.

Jauhari maintained that it was “standard procedure” to set a Beijing-bound route for the plane according to its schedule.

“As far as we are concerned, the aircraft was programmed to fly to Beijing,” he told a news conference at the Sama-Sama Hotel in Sepang, which was also broadcast live on television.

“It could be speculation. Once you are in the aircraft, anything is possible,” he added.

The New York Times had reported that the “air turnback” made by the MH370 flight was executed using the plane’s navigational computer inside the cockpit.

Citing unnamed US law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the plane was not piloted manually as initially believed, adding to the mounting evidence that the person or persons behind the “deliberate action” to divert the plane from its Beijing-bound route was intimately familiar with the Boeing 777-200ER.

According to the US officials, the crucial piece of information was contained in the final transmission of the plane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) at 1.07am on March 8, the day the plane went missing.

Previous information by Malaysian authorities that the ACARS was shut off prior to the plane's last broadcast of “All right, good night” by co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid at 1.17am, had led to suspicion falling on the two aviators at the helm.

Yesterday, MAS clarified that the ACARS aboard MH370 could have been switched off any time between 1.07am and 1.37am, when the plane was due to make its next transmission but never did.

Malaysian Airlines group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya listens at a news conference at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang March 10, 2014. — Reuters pic

The revelation from the US investigators that the plane's path was altered via the Flight Management System prior to the final ACARS transmission indicates that the plan to divert the plane may have been set in motion even before then.

That the plane also threaded established navigational waypoints — Igari, Vampi, Gival and Igrex — further suggest the plane was piloted by the computer.

In its report, the NYT said a plane flown using waypoints would have altered its bearings in a manner gentle enough to not alert those onboard to the change.

Today, the Department of Civil Aviation Director-General Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman also addressed theories that an electrical fault could have caused a decompression in the plane cabin and knocked the pilots unconscious.

“We are not discounting any possibilities,” he said in the joint news conference in Sepang, stressing the importance of finding the missing plane to determine if there were any problems with its system and structure.