Investigators frustrated at failing to make headway into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 are preparing to start all over again from scratch if the plane is not found within days.
As a cyclone halts a search in the Indian Ocean 1584 kilometres west of Perth, Malaysian authorities say they are set to regroup to plan the next phase of the investigation into the most baffling mystery in modern aviation.
The failure to find any debris from the plane has fuelled doubts among officials in Kuala Lumpur that the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 has been searching in the right area.
The vehicle has made nine missions searching an area identified from “pings” believed by experts to have come from the plane’s black box recording device.
Two-thirds of the search area has now been scoured by the vehicle.
Malaysia’s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein has made clear that a review of the search will involve Australia, which has been leading a multi-nation search effort in one of the most desolate oceans on earth.
But the government-controlled New Straits Times newspaper has again questioned whether all of the information has been handed over that is available from Pine Gap, the US spy satellite base near Alice Springs.
“We can’t be forcing them to show us data, as they had already said there was nothing,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying.
The newspaper also quoted sources close to the investigation as saying investigators might even have to reconsider the seemingly impossible scenario the plane “landed” somewhere else than the Indian Ocean.
“The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370,” the newspaper quoted sources as saying.
A spokeswoman for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, an Australian government body coordinating the search, would not confirm any plans for a change in the search.
"At the moment, we are focused on pursuing the best lead we have in relation to missing flight MH370," she said.
"The search of the focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of 10 kilometres radius around the second towed pinger locator detection on 8 April.
"It is important this lead is pursued to its completion so we can either confirm or discount the focused underwater area as the final resting place of MH370.
"This is clearly of great importance to the families of those on board."
The spokeswoman said the search for any sign of the plane would continue.
"We are currently consulting very closely with our international partners on the best way to effect this for the future."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that "our expert advice is that the aircraft went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean".
"[A]t the moment we are conducting an underwater search with the best equipment that we have currently available of an area of just under 400 square kilometres. If at the end of that period we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search.
"We may well rethink the search but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery. We owe it to the families of the 238 people on board, we owe it to the hundreds of millions, indeed billions, of people who travel by air, to try to get to the bottom of this."
But Malaysian officials are known to be deeply concerned about raising the hopes of the relatives of passengers who were on board the plane, some of whom refuse to believe their relatives are dead.
Many object to the possibility of authorities issuing death certificates for the 239 people on board the Boeing 777 that disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
They say they want to see evidence of the plane before any determination is made about the fate of the passengers.
In an e-mail to the government, relatives also criticised authorities for not seeking an independent scientific review of the technical analysis that led the search to focus on the current area.
The analysis conducted by the satellite company Inmarsat and an international investigation team concluded the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean thousands of kilometres off course after running out of fuel.
Officials in Kuala Lumpur have released only scant information about the criminal investigation into the plane’s disappearance after initially announcing there was credible evidence of a “deliberate” action on board to cut communications and turn the plane around.
But they have indicated that unless the plane’s black box recorder is recovered they may never discover what happened on board the ill-fated flight.
with Aleisha Orr, Matthew Knott
