China begins land search for missing plane

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the missing passenger jet, is now being searched for across land in China.

11:00 18 March 2014

China has started searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 across land, rather than oceans and has deployed 21 satellites to aid their efforts.

The nation also stated that there was no evidence of terror links found among the plane's Chinese passengers. Within the manifest, China dominated the passenger list with 153 people on board being Chinese. The next closest were Malaysians, of which there were 38.

Meanwhile, Australia has focussed its search area in the south. In all, 26 countries are looking for the plane which vanished over a week ago.

The plane's last known location was in the Malacca Straits with searches mainly looking at two air corridors. The aircraft was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went missing.

The Malaysia Airlines plane left Kuala Lumpur airport on March 8th at 00:40 local time. The last transmission from the plane's Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was received at 01:07 with another transmission due 30 minutes later, but this did not come through.

Officials speculate the communications systems were deliberately shut down around the time that the last words from the plane ("all right, good night") were uttered by co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid to air traffic controllers at 01:19 just as the plane left Malaysian airspace. It vanished from screens two minutes later, but military radar at 02:15 clocked the plane over the Malacca Straits which is in the opposite direction from its planned flight path.