LATEST UPDATE: The sightings are beginning to increase. And the anguish for the families is only going to get worse.
A day after a US pilot claimed a satellite image he saw was the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Adelaide-based GeoResonance was quoted in Malaysian media and by Australia's Channel Seven as saying it had detected possible debris from a plane 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) from the current search location – in the Bay of Bengal.
However, Australian authorities on Wednesday dismissed claims by a marine exploration company that material found in the Bay of Bengal could be from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
On Tuesday, Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he was verifying the information but Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is fronting the search, downplayed any link.
"The location of MH370 suggested by the GeoResonance report (in the Bay of Bengal) is not in the Australian search and rescue zone," a spokesman for the government agency told AFP.
"The Australian led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft's location. The location specified by the GeoResonance report is not within the search arc derived from this data.
"The joint international team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc."
GeoResonance, which specialises in geophysical surveys to find oil and gas, groundwater, and uranium, said its research using images from satellites and aircraft had identified elements on the ocean floor consistent with material from a plane.
The company said it surveyed over 2,000,000 square kilometres.
"We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777... these are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials," company representative Pavel Kursa told Channel Seven.
Another company representative, David Pope, told the broadcaster: "We're not trying to say that it definitely is MH370, however it is a lead we feel should be followed up."
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Tuesday that China and Australia were aware of the announcement. "Malaysia is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information," a statement from his office said.
Pilot's claim
Is this the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airline MH370? Six weeks into the search for the missing airliner, with absolutely no sign of any debris to prove that the airline did go down into the Indian Ocean, websites across the globe have reported that a US pilot quoted on US channel WIVB believes he has found an image of MH370.
As part of a global search on TomNod, a crowd-sourcing website that has been sharing online satllite imagery in the hope of finding the airline, New York pilot Michael Hoebel, 60, believes he has found an image of what appears to be the wreck.
Where is it? According to the reports, quoting Hoebel, in the Gulf of Thailand.
Quoted by the TV news channel, Hoebel refuted it was a shark image, saying: “That's a 210ft shark.
The lighter skin where the wing attaches to the fuselage - you see that lighter skin."
Air search called off... Only underwater now
The air search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet has been called off but the underwater search will be expanded.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared a new phase in the search for MH370, saying it is now "highly unlikely" any wreckage will be found on the ocean's surface.
"By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk," he was quoted as telling reporters in Canberra on Monday.
Authorities will instead focus all their efforts on the underwater search of the probable impact zone - an area of about 700km by 80km of the remote Indian Ocean.
Most of the ocean in the area is between 4,000 and 4,500 metres deep.
"We will search it all," Mr Abbott said.
Report awaited
Malaysia is set to release a comprehensive report on its investigation and search into the missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 this week.
With several surprising new developments this week, not least the reported CNN interview where Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is quoted as saying military radar tracked an aircraft on March 8.
The Malaysian PM said he initially didn’t believe it but was told that the military radars have some capability. The authorities are not sure whether it was MH370 or any other aircraft.
There is also the question of whether the search is going on in the right area to begin with.
These theories will ensure the conspiracy angle stays alive, however, all eyes will be on the report set to come out and if more ‘secret revelations’ are to made by Malaysia.
The atoll of Diego Garcia is forever hovering in the background and will continue to drive internet discussion until there is closure on the case.
Confident signals
Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he was "very confident" that signals from the black box had been detected.
The undersea search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is to be extended beyond the small area identified as its most likely resting place as the quest for any sign of the missing plane enters its 50th day on Saturday.
The submarine drone Bluefin 21 has so far searched about 95 per cent of a 10 square km area of the Indian Ocean seabed, pinpointed after the detection of acoustic pings believed to be from the plane's black box flight recorders.
Bluefin 21 had to abort the search on Friday and resurface due to a software malfunction. Technicians fixed the drone overnight and its 14th, 16 hour trip to the sea floor at depths of more than 4.5 km was underway on Saturday.
"If no contacts of interest are made, Bluefin-21 will continue to examine the areas adjacent to the 10km radius," Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in in charge of the search said in a statement.
Obama in Malaysia
US President Barack Obama offered support to Malaysia on Saturday in the baffling mystery over missing flight MH370, an official said.
Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who is leading Malaysia's efforts to determine the fate of the passenger jet, said he spoke briefly with Obama after the president's arrival for an official visit.
"He said he knows it is a tough, long, road ahead. We'll work together. There is always support," Hishammuddin said.
"I'm very happy to hear (this) because it is a long journey."
Malaysian military radar tracked an aircraft after MH370 went missing, says PM
A Malaysian military aircraft did track an unidentified aircraft in the country’s airspace when at the time of MH370 losing contact with the ground control, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said.
Quoting a CNN interview, the Daily Mail said the radar tracked aircraft after it had turned back on its from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
The Malaysian PM said he initially didn’t believe but was told that the military radars have some capability.
But the authorities are not sure whether it was MH370 or any other aircraft.
Malaysia will release a preliminary report next week on the disappearance of flight MH370, Prime Minister Najib Razak said, as his government battles criticism over the transparency of its investigation.
"I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report," Najib told CNN in an interview aired late Thursday.
Malaysian officials said Wednesday the report already had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which requires countries to submit within 30 days a factual run-down of what is known so far in any air crash.
Search for missing Malaysian jet to take years
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is likely to drag on for years, a senior U.S. defence official told Reuters on Friday, as an underwater search for any trace of the plane's wreckage off west Australia appeared to have failed.
The official, speaking under condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment on the search effort, said two weeks of scouring the Indian Ocean floor with a U.S. Navy submersible drone had turned up no wreckage.
He said the search for the jetliner, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, would now enter a much harder phase of scouring broader areas of the ocean near where the plane is believed to have crashed.
"We went all in on this small area and didn't find anything. Now you've got to go back to the big area," the official said. "And now you're talking years."
On Friday, the undersea drone Bluefin-21 is expected to finish what may be the last of its 16-hour trips to depths of more than 4.5km (2.8 miles) searching a 10 square km (6.2 square mile) stretch of seabed about 2,000 miles northwest of Perth.
Authorities had identified the area as their strongest lead in determining the plane's final resting place after detecting what they suspected was a signal, or "ping", from the plane's black box recorder on April 4.
But the U.S. official said Malaysia would have to decide how to proceed with the search, including whether to bring in more underwater drones, even with the understanding that the search could continue for years without a refined search area.
Searchers face tough choices on what next
Searchers for missing Flight MH370 face tough choices on how to proceed after almost seven fruitless weeks, with only a fraction of a deep-sea zone still left to be scanned.
After 11 dives seeking wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines jet which mysteriously disappeared on March 8, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has come up empty-handed.
"Bluefin-21 has now completed more than 90 percent of the focused underwater search area," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre managing the search said early Thursday. "No contacts of interest have been found to date."
Australia is leading the search for the missing Boeing 777, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean after veering dramatically off course from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing route.
JACC refused to speculate on what the next steps would be if the Bluefin-21 ended its 3D sonar scanning some 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) below the surface without result, but said the search would continue.
"We are currently consulting very closely with our international partners on the best way to effect this for the future," it said.
For now, it will not give up on the 400 square km search zone which has offered the best hopes so far of finding the aircraft, based on seabed signals consistent with those emitted by black box data recorders.
"At the moment, we are focused on pursuing the best lead we have in relation to missing Flight MH370," the agency said.
"It is important this lead is pursued to its completion so we can either confirm or discount the focused underwater area as the final resting place of MH370. This is clearly of great importance to the families of those on board."
Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said that while the search would not abandoned, it could face a "re-think". Defence Minister David Johnston has suggested a more powerful sonar scanner could be deployed.
Malaysia's Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has also insisted the search for the passenger jet, which was carrying 239 people, would not stall but could move on to different technology.
"I can confirm that in fact we are increasing the assets that are available for deep-sea search... that involves commercial ventures," he told reporters on Wednesday.
"And in the next few days, we will be talking to other entities to look at the possibility of increasing the assets for the next phase," adding that these would not be deployed in the next few days.
"What is more important is that the search continues and this is an assurance we will give to the families of the passengers," he added.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has also reportedly suggested that the search zone could be broadened, if calculations about the plane's position when it likely ran out of fuel and crashed are revised.
"The area for focus of the search... has already been moved twice, and there's always a possibility that further work will move it again," the bureau's chief commissioner Martin Dolan told CNN.
As the painstaking aerial and surface searches over the vast and remote ocean continued, the discovery on Wednesday of potential debris on a Western Australian beach was ruled out as a lead.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the unidentified material found on the far south coast of Western Australia was not associated with MH370.
The JACC said up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships would assist in the search on Thursday, with most concentrating on a visual search of 49,567 square km some 1,584 km northwest of Perth.
The visual search has for days been frustrated by weather related to ex-tropical Cyclone Jack, and authorities said it could again be suspended with sea swells expected of three to four metres.
EARLIER REPORT
Debris found on Australian beach not from MH370
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau ruled out Thursday any link between material found on a beach in southwestern Australia and the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
Debris described as "unidentified material" was found Wednesday on a beach near Augusta, more than 300 kilometres (180 miles) south of Perth, by a member of the public and handed to police.
The ATSB decided to examine photographs of the material to determine whether it was linked to the search for the missing jet.
Photographs were also provided to the Malaysian investigation team.
However ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan scotched any hope of a breakthrough.
"We've carefully examined detailed photographs that were taken for us by the police, and we're satisfied that it's not a lead in terms of the search for MH370," Dolan told ABC radio.
"We want to pursue every possible lead that will help us find MH370 but sadly this is one that isn't going to help that search," he said.
Dolan had Wednesday night declared the material, apparently sheet metal with rivets, "sufficiently interesting for us to take a look at the photographs".
However he had added a note of caution. "The more we look at it, the less excited we get."
The Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 when it mysteriously diverted.
It is thought to have crashed into the remote Indian Ocean off Western Australia, where a huge search is underway.
'Missing Malaysia Airline MH370 may have landed, not crashed'; Diego Garcia?
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may be forced to re-investigate the possibility that the passenger jet with 239 on board landed, according to new reports.
A report in the Financial Express, quoting The New Strait Times has quoted sources close to the probe that the investigation teams are considering revisiting the possibility that the plane did not crash into the ocean and had landed safely at an unknown location.
“The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible, as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370. However, the possibility of a specific country hiding the plane when more than 20 nations are searching for it, seems absurd,” the sources told the NST.
This latest report will once again put the spotlight on the island of Deigo Garcia and the conspiracy theory that the small atoll is the most likely spot the plane could have landed.
Click to read: Diego Garcia and MH370 conspiracy of a 'lost' island in middle of it all
All options on table
It’s the kind of news that families of passengers of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will dread, but as long as the search goes on in vain cyclone or not, the fact is, all options are on the table.
According to a report on website asiaone.com, quoting the New Straits Times, members of the International Investigation Team (IIT) in charge of the search are considering the possibility that the search is going on in the wrong area.
Quoting sources within the team based in Kuala Lumpur, the possibility that the jet had landed somewhere else, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean, is now back on the table.
"The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible, as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370,” the report said.
As the remote controlled submarine was expected to complete its ninth mission on Tuesday, four days after the coordination centre gave the five-day timeframe, the centre confirmed that it had covered about two thirds of its target search area and had found "no contacts of interest".
The dawning prospect of the Bluefin-21, initially seen as the search's most promising aid, completing its mission without a trace of the missing aircraft has authorities under pressure to determine which strategy to take next.
The daily search involving some two dozen nations is already shaping up to be the most expensive in aviation history.