MH370: Searchers thought ancient shipwreck was missing plane

Searchers for missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 in the Indian Ocean have found a 200-year-old shipwreck - the second since the search for the passenger plane began nearly two years ago.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. There were 239 people on board.

See also: MH370: 'All pilots' believe there is no mystery


Using an underwater sonar vessel, the team working for the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) based in Western Australia located the large metal object, which at first looked as if it could be the fuselage of a plane.

The Australian-led underwater search, which is expected to be completed by the middle of 2016, has scoured more than half of a planned 120,000 sq kms (74,000 sq miles) of seafloor, the agency overseeing the effort said.

See also: British shipwreck discovered in Arctic

The search has focussed on a remote part of southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is widely believed to have gone down.

A piece of the plane found washed up on the French island of Reunion in July 2015 provided the first direct evidence that the plane had crashed into the sea but no further trace has been found.

In May searchers found the wreckage of what was believed to be a 19th century cargo ship and now sonar imagery has identified what is likely to be a second shipwreck, a steel/iron vessel dating from the turn of the 19th Century, according to JACC.