BREAKING NEWS! No survivor as Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 crashed in southern Indian Ocean!

As a growing number of airplanes scoured the southern Indian Ocean in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, authorities released new details that paint a different picture of what may have happened in the plane's cockpit.

Military radar tracking shows that the aircraft changed altitude after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, a source close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN. The plane flew as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according to the source.

The sharp turn seemed to be intentional, the source said, because executing it would have taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a time period during which the pilot or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or other emergency onboard.

Authorities say the plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate because of a catastrophic failure.

The official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic.

Earlier Sunday, Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing aircraft's reporting system showed it heading to Beijing -- a revelation that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the plane's flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air-traffic controllers for the last time.

That reduces, but doesn't rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit.

The new details give more insight about what happened on the plane, but don't explain why the plane went missing or where it could be.

Analysts are divided about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it's a sign that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.

CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien called the fresh details about the flight a "game changer."

 A satellite image released by China shows an object in the southern Indian Ocean.A satellite image released by China shows an object in the southern Indian Ocean.

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"Now we have no evidence the crew did anything wrong," he said. "And in fact, now, we should be operating with the primary assumption being that something bad happened to that plane shortly after they said good night."

If a crisis on board caused the plane to lose pressure, he said, pilots could have chosen to deliberately fly lower to save passengers onboard.

"You want to get down to 10,000 feet, because that is when you don't have to worry about pressurization. You have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep everybody alive," he said. "So part of the procedure for a rapid decompression ... it's called a high dive, and you go as quickly as you can down that to that altitude."

Military radar tracked the flight between 1:19 a.m. and 2:40 a.m. the day it went missing, the source told CNN, but it's not clear how long it took the plane to descend to 12,000 feet.

The new details about altitude are "highly significant," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"It explains so many pieces that didn't fit together before," she said. "Now, if we have a scenario where something happened, the plane made a dramatic turn and dropped from 35,000 feet to 12,000 feet, this scenario would fit what a pilot would do in the event of a catastrophic onboard event, such as a rapid decompression, a fire, an explosion. That's what you would have to do, descend, get down and turn around and try to get back to an airport that could accommodate an ailing plane."

If the latest information is accurate, the theory of pilots trying to save the plane fits, said Mark Weiss, a former American Airlines pilot and CNN aviation analyst.

But that's a big if, he said.

"We've had so much information come out and so much contradictory information come out, that I caution against jumping to any types of conclusions at this point," he said.

Culled from CNN