MH370: Search for missing plane enters 34th day

Aircraft and ships searching for a missing Malaysian airliner have spotted many objects in the southern Indian Ocean and recovered a few but none are from the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight, MH370, according to the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC).

"None of the recovered items are believed to be associated with MH370," it said in a statement as the search for the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft entered its 34th day Thursday with 14 aircraft and 13 ships scouring a 57,923 sq km area.

The centre of the search area is about 2,280 km northwest of Perth.

Search area for the missing flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

JACC said the underwater search also resumed Thursday, with the Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield covering the northern end of the defined search area and the Chinese ship Haixun 01 and Australian vessel HMS Echo, the southern end.

Moderate southeasterly winds and isolated showers have been forecast in the area for Thursday, the statement said, noting that visibility would be fair (5,000 metres) during the showers.

The Ocean Shield, which has been towing a United States Navy pinger locator to listen for signals from the plane's flight recorders, twice acquired signals last Saturday. On Tuesday, it again located the signals twice.

JACC chief coordinator Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Angus Houston had said that based on expert analysis of the first two signals, they were believed to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder.

China's Haixun 01 had also reported detecting some acoustic sounds.

Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have landed in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia.

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of Boeing 777-200 aircraft, that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".