The unidentified 46-year-old man still managed to miss the Alitalia flight from Turin to Rome on Thursday evening despite keeping the plane on the tarmac for two and a half hours.
Although the weather was poor, with heavy rain and fog and despite warnings, the plane took off.
"Despite media reports the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear, we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate".
The British Airways Web site, still advertising the plane despite a hiatus of a year, calls it the "ultimate travel experience".
What of newspaper reports that the singer or someone in her entourage had insisted that baggage be loaded in the plane despite the pilot's warnings?
The president argued that a "mix of human and systemic failures" allowed Mr Abdulmutallab to board the plane despite already being on the radar of US intelligence agencies.
They also were looking at how explosives were taken onto the plane despite security procedures and what changes might be required to detect such materials in the future.
He said the hijackers continued to make threats to kill and blow up the plane despite assurances from the British authorities that they were safe.
The owner, Gilbert Chacon, withheld maintenance logs and records for the plane despite repeated requests by investigators, a 26-page affidavit says.
Customers including Thomson Airways and Virgin Atlantic have also backed the reliability of the plane, despite the grounding of the global fleet in January after two battery fires on operating aircraft.
