China leading northern search

China is leading the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the search areas closest to it in the northern corridor, said Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Tuesday.   [Special coverage]

At the regular press briefing in Kuala Lumpur, the minister said the vast search area is now 2.24 million square nautical miles, which is roughly the size of Australia.

In an update on the operation, Hishammuddin said the northern corridor and the southern corridor have each been divided into seven quadrants. Each quadrant is 160,000 square nautical miles.

"China and Kazakhstan have agreed to lead in the search areas closest to their countries," he said.

On Monday, it was announced that Australia and Indonesia would lead the search in the southern corridor.

In addition to the land search in the northern corridor, China is also involved in the scouting of waters in both the northern and southern corridors, namely the southeastern Bay of Bengal and near Sunda Strait, according to China's Ministry of Transport.

Hishammuddin told the press conference that he spoke to US defense secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday morning regarding the possibility of using US satellites, radar, aircraft and vessels to assist the search in the southern corridor.

Meanwhile, Malaysia is now asking international partners who have assisted it before in the search to take another look at their primary radar data, while countries involved in the search had said they didn't detect any sign of the missing MH370.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Thailand's military said its radar detected a plane that may have been MH370 just minutes after the missing jetliner's communications went down, and that it didn't share the information earlier because it wasn't specifically asked for it.

According to the report, Thai air force spokesman Montol Suchookorn said the plane followed a twisting flight path to the Strait of Malacca, the last point where it was detected. But Montol said the Thai military wasn't sure whether it detected the same plane.

In response to a media inquiry, Hishammuddin said Tuesday he was not aware of the information.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Malaysian Airlines said a New York Times (NYT) report, which said the change of flight path was programmed into the aircraft's computer navigation system, could be speculation.

The NYT report, which quoted US officials, had fueled speculation that the turn was probably made by someone in the cockpit.