MH370 Investigators to Issue Statement on Anniversary

An international team of investigators probing the loss of flight MH370 will issue a statement next week on the second anniversary of the plane's disappearance, a government official said Thursday.

"On 8 March, the MH370 investigating team will release an interim statement," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

"The purpose of setting up this investigative team is to determine the cause of the accident, so I think the interim report will definitely look into this effect."

It was not clear whether the statement would contain new insights into what was behind the Malaysia Airlines flight's mysterious disappearance on March 8, 2014.

The plane vanished during an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew.

The formation of investigative teams is mandated under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules.

The investigators are in turn required to release an annual "interim" report on the status of their findings in cases where the aircraft has not been found.

The MH370 team, formed by Malaysia two years ago, comprises aviation investigators from bodies including the U.S. National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) and its counterparts from Britain, China, France, Australia, Malaysia and other countries.

Its first interim report, issued last year on the first anniversary, contained the revelation that the battery on MH370's underwater locator beacon had expired a year before the incident.

But it was otherwise largely a summary of facts that already were known and shed no new light on the mystery.

Analysts believe MH370 veered far off course to the remote southern Indian Ocean, where it went down.

An extensive two-year search and rescue effort led by Australian authorities, which aims to locate a crash site and possibly retrieve the black boxes, has so far come up empty and could be discontinued in a few months.

Last July, a wing fragment -- later confirmed to be from MH370 -- was found washed ashore on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, far from the current search area, but it also has shed little light on the mystery.

Another piece of suspected aircraft wreckage was found off the east African coast this week, officials said, and will be sent to Australia to be analyzed for any MH370 link.