Search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to be expanded

Australia's prime minister yesterday announced an expanded search across a huge swathe of seabed where flight MH370 might have crashed seven weeks ago, admitting it was now "highly unlikely" that any surface wreckage would be found.

The hunt for the Boeing 777 in the southern Indian Ocean has so far yielded nothing on the surface or below, baffling authorities who are struggling to explain the loss of the aircraft.

"I regret to say that thus far, none of our efforts in the air, on the surface, or undersea have found any wreckage," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

"It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface," he added, noting that a surface area of more than 4.5 million square kilometres had been scanned. "By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become water-logged and sunk," Abbott said.

The Malaysia Airlines flight disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 people - mostly Chinese - and is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean after mysteriously diverting from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing journey.

Abbott said the search would now enter a new phase involving undersea efforts being ramped up. He said the new search area, which spans 700 kilometres by 80 kilometres, could take from six to eight months to completely examine.

The search zone has been defined by analysis of satellite data, and was boosted by several detections of transmissions believed to have come from the plane's black box recorders before their batteries died.