Thai police and Interpol have questioned travel agents involved in issuing plane tickets to two men who travelled on the missing jet using the stolen passports.

Grand Horizon Travel in Pattaya said they got the booking from China Southern Airlines in Bangkok.

They passed on the booking to Six Stars Travel, which issued the tickets.

Thai police said the stolen passports were not detected because they were not used to exit the country.

Christophe Naudin, expert in flight safety: “Here there’s something that’s troubling: when one steals documents and sells them on to migrants, they are in general used quite quickly after the theft. Here this isn’t the case as these documents were stored for two years for one (person) and one year for the other one.”

The stolen passports were entered into Interpol’s database after they were stolen .. but very few countries use that list of stolen passports at their borders.

Officers said on Monday Thailand would now move so to do.