Boeing 777 missing mystery: How can jet disappear? In the ocean, it's not hard

"This is not the first time we have had to wait a few days to find the wreckage."

Based on what he's heard, Cox believes it's increasingly clear that the plane somehow veered from its normal flight path.

He said that after the plane disappeared from radar, it must have been "intact and flew for some period of time.

Beyond that, it's all speculation." If it had exploded midair along its normal flight path, "we would have found it by now."

Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, whose agency is leading a multinational effort to find the Boeing 777, said more than 1,000 people and at least 34 planes and 40 ships were searching a radius of 100 nautical miles around the last known location of Flight MH370.

No signal has been detected since early Saturday morning, when the plane was at its cruising altitude and showed no sign of trouble.