Flight MH370 live: Updates as air search for jet ends amid claims it crashed into Bay of Bengal

Planes are no longer being used in the search for wreckage from MH370 as the scale of the search is cut back.

More than 50 days after the plane went missing, the U.S., Japan, New Zealand and Malaysia all said they would be halting the air search.

There were 14 boats involved in the mission, but it is also believed that many of those will be pulled out.

The Joint Agency Coordination Cetnre said that the undersea search would be intensified.

The cost of the expansion of the search is expected to cost more than £34million, drawing questions over who will pay.

Tony Abbott, Australia's Prime Minister, is in talks with Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein to discuss the future of the search and who will foot the bill.

Mr Hussein said: "This discussion will include issues such as the deployment of assets with deep-sea search capabilities, the cost of the operation and how best authorities can ensure the next of kin of those on board MH370 are properly informed of the latest developments."

Malaysia has appointed Mr Kok Soo Chon, former director-general of the civil aviation department, to lead an international investigation team tasked to find the cause of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The team is made up of experts from the US National Transport Safety Board, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch, China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, France’s Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau, the Australia Transport Safety Bureau, aircraft manufacturer Boeing and British satellite communications company Inmarsat.

It also has representatives from Singapore and Indonesia.

An interesting tweet.  Could MH370 really be in the Bay of Bengal?

A striking photo.

This image shows the international and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) air crews and officials who participated in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370.

They are pictured on the tarmac at RAAF Base Pearce, located north of Perth.

The organisation leading the hunt for missing MH370 appears to have dismissed the suggestion from Australian firm GeoResonance that the jet could have come down in the Bay of Bengal.

The Australian-led search team said it was relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft’s location and the location in the GeoResonance report was not within that search arc.

“The joint international team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc,” it said.

Japan has requested to take part in the international panel of experts looking into the Malaysia Airlines MH370 tragedy.

Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said Japan was welcome to join in as the panel was transparent and credible.

"We have no problem getting people to come onboard because the whole world wants to know about MH370 and, like I said before, probably what we find out about MH370 will change the history of aviation," he said.

The latest dispatch from the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is leading the hunt for missing MH370, said the search is entering a new phase.

It said the search will "transition over the coming weeks into an intensified undersea search".

This comes amid reports that wreckage from a commercial airliner has been spotted in the Bay of Bengal.

A former head of Malaysia's civil aviation department will lead an investigation into missing Flight MH370.

The probe will also involve members of the US National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies.

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transport minister, said Kok Soo Chon would head the team.

"The main purpose of the international investigation team is to evaluate, investigate and determine the actual cause of the incident so similar incidents could be avoided in the future," he said in a statement.

"It is imperative for the government to form this independent team of investigators which is not only competent and transparent but also highly credible."

The hunt for MH370 continues despite claims from an Australian private company that the international search may be looking in the wrong area.

Sea-floor surveying company GeoResonance believes it has found the wreckage of a commercial airliner lying on the ocean floor in the Bay of Bengal and has asked the authorities to investigate.

The company's director, David Pope, said he only went public with the information after he felt the authorities were disregarding it.

'We're a large group of scientists, and we were being ignored, and we thought we had a moral obligation to get our findings to the authorities,' he told CNN.

Good evening and welcome to our live blog of today's search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The aerial search for the plane, which disappeared on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China has now ended.

The search, ongoing for seven weeks, will now focus underwater instead.