Where exactly is Flight MH370?

Officials say the chance of finding floating debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is highly unlikely, announce new phase of the search will focus on a far larger area of the Indian Ocean floor. Mana Rabiee reports.

IT HAS reportedly been sighted in the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Thailand and the Indian Ocean - and even as far afield as the Maldives - but seven weeks after Flight MH370 went missing, searchers still have no firm clue where the Malaysia Airlines plane actually is.

The disappearance of the Boeing 777 has become one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries.

And as the search drags on, the theories about what actually happened to the jet continue to fly thick and fast.

In an extraordinary departure, Adelaide-based resource survey company GeoResonance said today it may have detected debris from the plane in the Bay of Bengal — 5000km from the current search area.

But the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is co-ordinating the Indian Ocean search, denied the claims and said the team was "satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc".

"The location of MH370 suggested by the GeoResonance report (in the Bay of Bengal) is not in the Australian search and rescue zone, the JACC said in a statement.

"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 speculation over the plane took another turn yesterday with the Gulf of Thailand theory.

New York pilot Michael Hoebel claims he has an image of what appeared to be the plane's wreckage in the Gulf of Thailand.

Using the online satellite imagery website TomNod, Hoebel said he was shocked to find the plane resting in what appeared to be an unbroken state.

All of this is of little consolation to the relatives of the 239 people on board the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. As the search continues, relatives of the Chinese victims aboard the plane have been given information on the serial numbers of the black box on the Boeing 777 aircraft and the voice recording of the communication between the Malaysia Airlines plane and air traffic control, the Straits-Times reports.

During a briefing at the Lido Hotel in Beijing, one of the slides presented to the families revealed that the serial number of the flight data recorder was 08636, while that of the cockpit voice recorder was 2677.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has appointed Mr Kok Soo Chon, former director-general of the civil aviation department, to lead an international investigation team tasked to find the cause of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The team is made up of experts from the US National Transport Safety Board, Britain's Air Accidents Investigations Branch, China's Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, France's Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau, the Australia Transport Safety Bureau, aircraft manufacturer Boeing and British satellite communications company Inmarsat.

It also has representatives from Singapore and Indonesia.

"I would like to stress that this investigation is not aimed at apportioning blame or liability," Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement.

Search for answers ... Pilot Michael Hoebel says he found this image, which he says could be MH370, after spending hours trawling throughcrowd-sourcing website TomNod.com. Source: Supplied

As for the wreckage claims by GeoResonance, Malaysian officials said they are assessing the information.

"We're not trying to say it definitely is MH370, however we feel it is a lead that should be followed up by the authorities," GeoResonance director David Pope told Channel 7 News.

The company used imaging, radiation chemistry and other technologies to search the 2 million square kilometres of the ocean floor for chemicals that are found in Boeing 777 jets, and discovered aluminium, titanium, jet fuel residue and other elements in the Bay of Bengal.

GeoResonance compared images taken on March 5 and 10 — before and after the plane's disappearance — and found differences that could indicate a crash site.

The location is about 190km south of Bangladesh.

The company has been contacted by Malaysian officials, and was asked to give a presentation on its finding, Channel 7 reports.

"We're a large group of scientists, and we were being ignored, and we thought we had a moral obligation to get our findings to the authorities," Mr Pope told CNN.

Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said 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.

Still waiting ... Relatives of Chinese passengers on-board the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane listen to a briefing on the searcha hotel in Beijing. Picture: AP Source: AP

AIRCREWS THANKED FOR MH370 SEARCH

"Need more corroboration n verification b4 we deploy assets," Mr Hussein later tweeted.

GeoResonance said it began trying to find the plane before the official search area moved to the southern Indian Ocean.

"The only motivation is to help the families of the missing passengers and crew, knowing the company has the technology capable of the task," it said.

Flight 370 was carrying 239 passengers and crew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared the morning of March 8.

India, Bangladesh and other countries to the north have said they never detected the plane in their airspace.

GeoResonance said it gave its preliminary findings to investigators on March 31 and was surprised by a lack of response. That claim could not be confirmed.