There may be a new lead to the whereabouts of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, with new reports suggesting the jetliner may have traveled directly west over the Indian Ocean after disappearing from radar.
CRI's Lucy Du explains.
Reporter: Local reports surfacing out of the Maldives are suggesting residents of the Island Archepelago witnessed a low-flying jetliner in the early-morning hours on March 8th, the same day Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared.
A local news website is reporting residents of a remote island in the chain reported seeing a white aircraft with red stripes on it flying unusually low toward the southern tip of the Maldives around 6:15am local time.
The time being reported would coincide to around the time it would have taken for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet to make it from its last reported position over Malaysia to the Maldives.
The Maldives are located around a thousand kilometers southwest of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean.
Investigators have yet to confirm these reports.
Meantime, military authorities in Thailand say one of their air force radar stations also detected the signal of an unidentified aircraft that departed from Malaysia and flew northward, but later diverted to an area along Strait of Malacca, which is south of the Malaysian peninsula.
Thailand's air force chief says it remains to be confirmed whether that contact was, in fact, missing flight MH370.
Meanwhile, two American destroyers involved in the search have withdrawn from the operation.
Despite this, American authorities say the US Navy's Seventh Fleet will continue helping in the search, but will rely instead on its long-range surveillance aircraft.
William J. Marks is a spokesperson for the US Seventh Fleet.
"We are not using submarines right now in the search and recovery effort. Between the USS Kidd it's 2 MH60R helicopters, which give it a search area of a couple of hundred miles. And our P-8 and P-3, our focus right now is on the surface of the water: any debris or any sort of aircraft wreckage that may be out there."
The international search for the missing flight currently involves 26 countries.
The Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared in the early-morning hours of March 8th after someone intentionally disabled the jet's communication and radar systems and intentionally diverted the flight off-course.
Of the 239 passengers and crew on-board, 154 are Chinese.
Chinese authorities say they've ruled out any likelyhood of the Chinese nationals on-board being involved in the plane's disappearance.
For CRI, I am Lucy Du.
