Flight MH370 Update: Search For Missing Plane Resumes After Bad Weather Causes Delay

The underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 resumed after facing a delay due to bad weather, Malaysia's Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said last month that the search of more than 42,470 square miles of a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean will come to an end by January/February 2017.

"These two months are crucial as our aim is to cover the whole search area by January," the minister said, according to AsiaOne. "China is very committed. The Fugro Discovery and the Dong Hai Jiu 101 vessels are in that area now."

"Meanwhile, the African region is helping to comb the seaside to search for more debris," he said, adding that some of the debris confirmed to be from a Boeing 777 jet are being analysed to determine the cause of the crash.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Liow reportedly said that he met China's Transport Minister Li Xiaopeng during his official visit to the country recently and discussed how the search could be continued.

Last week, the agency leading the search for Flight MH370 said that analysis of wreckage belonging to the missing plane revealed that the flight descended rapidly, plunging to the sea with no one in control of the flight.

The plane was in a “high and increasing rate of descent” when it made its last satellite communication, the report said. The plane’s right outboard wing flap, which was found on Pemba island, was not deployed at the time of the crash, investigators said.

“The purpose of the examination was to inform the end-of-flight scenarios being considered by the search team,” the report said. “The right flaperon was probably at, or close to, the neutral position at the time it separated from the wing.”