MH370 A news report suggests doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could have crashed after a debilitating electrical power loss.

The Australian Transport Bureau, which is directing the search for the missing aircraft, has released findings that it is possible that a loss of power may have caused the Boeing 777 to switch to auto-pilot mode, cruising until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean.

The failure would have shut down the plane’s vital systems, effectively turning the jet into a "flying zombie", The Daily Beast reported.

MH370 is believed to have crashed after disappearing on March 8, 2014 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a five-hour flight to Beijing.

The plane was carrying 12 crew and 237 passengers, two of whom where Kiwis, and all of whom are presumed dead.

The plane last made contact with air control travelling over the South China Sea, less than an hour after take-off, on course to its destination.

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed off for the night with the words “Good night. Malaysian three seven zero."

Within a couple of minutes, the plane had disappeared from the civilian radar tracking its movements.

Responder systems sending its position and reporting the condition of its critical systems stopped transmitting and attempts to contact the aircraft failed.

A military radar later reported that it had picked up MH370 on its screen, showing the jet turning off course and heading back in the direction it had come from.

Part of the puzzle was that investigators found MH370's Satellite Data Unit (SDU) had tried to unexpectedly log on to a satellite 90 minutes after the flight had taken off and shortly after communications between air control and the craft failed.

The Australian Transport Bureau contended this was evidence of an electrical failure on the aircraft.

It is likely SDU was able to reboot itself after the auxiliary power unit kicked in to restore electricity.

Transmissions to the satellite, known as pings or handshakes, continued hourly until the plane is believed to have crashed.

Experts have used the pings to narrow down the final position of MH370, hundreds of kilometres away in the southern Indian Ocean.

The report suggested technical failures may be to blame for the power loss, but did not rule out human tampering, saying overhead switches in the cockpit or the main equipment centre below the flight deck could have been compromised.

- Stuff