Australia to redouble efforts to find Malaysia Airlines jet MH370

Australia will step up search efforts in an area they believe holds the best hope of finding a Malaysia Airlines jet, whose disappearance last year sparked one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history, officials said.

An Australian-led underwater search, the most expensive ever conducted, has so far found no trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which went missing with 239 passengers and crew during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

The number of vessels searching for the jet would be doubled to four, Australian deputy prime minister Warren Truss said.

One of the vessels would be provided by China.

The search has thus far focused on a 120,000sq km band of sea floor in the remote southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down.

Truss, flanked by officials from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Department of Defence, identified an area at the southern tip of that search band that is now believed to be the likeliest resting place of the wreckage.

The area, described by Truss as a “purple patch”, had been chosen based on an analysis of the flight data, path and information from global satellite networks.

One piece of the plane found washed up on the French island of Reunion in July provided the first direct evidence that the plane had crashed into the sea.