Data recovered from a home flight simulator owned by the captain of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 showed that someone used the device to plot a course to the southern Indian Ocean, where the missing jet is believed to have crashed, Australian officials said today.

Confusion has reigned over what was found on Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's flight simulator since New York Magazine reported last week that an FBI analysis showed he had conducted a simulated flight to the southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished along a similar route.

Malaysia rejected the report as false, but Australia's Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre confirmed today that the captain's simulator did indeed show that "someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean".

The Boeing 777 vanished with 239 people on board after flying far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, on March 8 2014.

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