Malaysia missing plane: Relatives threaten hunger strike

Relatives of the Chinese passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight have threatened a hunger strike if the Malaysian authorities fail to provide more accurate information.

Families vented their anger at a meeting with the airline in Beijing.

Officials in Malaysia say they are trying to narrow the search area, which now covers about 2.24m square nautical miles (7.68m sq km).

Flight MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board.

Some 25 countries are involved in looking for the plane.

A total of 153 Chinese nationals were on board the missing aircraft, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

China's state media has been criticising the Malaysian operation.

'Political fight'

Some Chinese relatives have said they believe the Malaysian authorities are holding information back and have demanded more clarity.

After a meeting with airline officials on Tuesday, families held a vote on organising a hunger strike.

'What we want is the truth,' said one woman.

'Don't let the passengers become the victims of a political fight.'

Ahmad Jauhari Yahy, chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, told a news conference on Monday that the airline was doing everything it could for the families.

Meanwhile, following speculation about the pilot's links to Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said: 'The search for flight MH370 is bigger than politics.'

Captain Zaharie Shah was reportedly a supporter of the jailed politician.

Mr Hussein praised the international response to the search efforts and said teams were continuing to search two vast air corridors north and south of the plane's last known location.

He added that the Malaysian authorities still believed the disappearance was a result of 'deliberate action' on the plane.

'No terror links'

Malaysia says the plane was intentionally diverted and could have flown on either a northern or southern arc from its last known position in the Malacca Straits.

China said earlier it had started searching its territory for the aircraft.

Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang also said background checks had shown no evidence to suggest any of the Chinese passengers had terror links, Xinhua news agency reported.

China said it had also deployed 21 satellites to help with the search.

What is ACARS? Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System is a service that allows computers aboard the plane to 'talk' to computers on the ground, relaying in-flight information about the health of its systems Messages are transmitted either by radio or digital signals via satellites, and can cover anything from the status of the plane's engines to a faulty toilet This provides ground crews with vital diagnostic information, allowing maintenance to be carried out more quickly

Meanwhile, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) said it had narrowed down its search area in the southern Indian Ocean based on satellite data and analysis of the aircraft's possible movements.

However, Amsa said the search area was still vast.

The Malaysia Airlines plane left Kuala Lumpur at 00:40 local time (16:40 GMT) on 8 March. The last transmission from the plane's Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was received at 01:07.

A transmission expected 30 minutes later did not come through, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahy told reporters on Monday.

The last words from the plane - 'all right, good night' - were believed to have been said by co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid to air traffic controllers at 01:19 as the plane left Malaysian airspace.

It then disappeared from air traffic controllers' screens at 01:21, when it was over the South China Sea, but was last spotted by military radar at 02:15 over the Malacca Straits - the opposite direction from its planned flight path.

Satellite communication at 08:11 showed that the plane could have continued flying for a further seven hours in a northern or southern arc.

Several countries have already rejected the suggestion that their airspace might have been breached.