Authorities have revealed one of the two men who used stolen passports to board the missing Malaysian Airlines plane looked like Mario Balotelli.
As it emerged an Iranian businessman known only as Mr Ali was understood to have booked the tickets for the two passengers using the stolen passports, the men who boarded the plane were said to have not been of 'Asian appearance'.
Malaysia's police chief was quoted by local media as saying that one of the men had been identified.
Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman declined to confirm this, but said authorities were looking at the possibility the men were connected to a stolen passport syndicate.
Asked by a reporter what they looked like 'roughly', he said: 'Do you know of a footballer by the name of (Mario) Balotelli? He is an Italian. Do you know how he looks like?'
A reporter then asked, 'Is he black?' and the aviation chief replied, 'Yes'.
Authorities had today still found no trace of the missing plane despite searches by ships from six navies and dozens of military aircraft.
A Thai travel agent who arranged the tickets for the two passengers has now said she had booked them on the flight via Beijing because they were the cheapest tickets, it has been reported.
The travel agent in the resort of Pattaya said an Iranian business contact she knew only as 'Mr Ali' had asked her to book tickets for the two men on March 1.
She had initially booked them on other airlines but those reservations expired and on March 6, Mr Ali had asked her to book them again.
She told the Financial Times she did not think Mr Ali, who paid her in cash and booked tickets with her regularly, was linked to terrorism.
A U.S. led search is also taking place hundreds of miles away on the other side of the Malaysian peninsula.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief said today that the search for the Boeing 777 which vanished early Saturday morning had failed to find anything and that a sighting of a yellow object, which was earlier suspected to have been a life raft, was found to be a false alarm.
It has now also been confirmed an oil slick suspected of coming from the wreckage was not jet fuel.
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 the other side of the Malaysian 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.
As Interpol investigates whether up to four passengers boarded the plane using stolen passports, it was today revealed five passengers checked on to the flight but did not board the plane. Their baggage was removed before it departed.
Malaysian authorities now believe they have CCTV images of the two men using the stolen passports to board the flights.
The images have been circulated across international intelligence agencies and will be cross-referenced with facial recognition software.
The passports were used to buy tickets booked in the names of Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kozel on March 6, 2014, and issued in the Thai city of Pattaya, a popular beach resort south of the capital Bangkok.
The pilot of a Malaysia Airlines jet that went missing on Saturday enjoyed flying the Boeing 777 so much that he spent his off days tinkering with a flight simulator of the plane that he had set up at home, current and former co-workers said.
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, captain of the airliner carrying 239 people bound for Beijing from the Malaysian capital, had always wanted to become a pilot and joined the national carrier in 1981.
Airline staff who worked with the pilot said Zaharie knew the ins and outs of the Boeing 777 extremely well, as he was always practicing with the simulator. They declined to be identified due to company policy.
'He was an aviation tech geek. You could ask him anything and he would help you. That is the kind of guy he is,' said a Malaysia Airlines co-pilot who had flown with Zaharie in the past.
Zaharie set up the Boeing 777 simulator at his home in a suburb on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital where many airline staff stay as it provides quick access to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.