Malaysia Airlines MH370 missing: Have any traces of the plane been found?

It has been an emotional rollercoaster for the families of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. There have been several reports of debris and large objects spotted in the sea, but they all turned out to be false leads.

False sighting 1: Oil slicks

On Saturday night, the Vietnamese government said its search team had reported sightings of oil slicks in the sea off southern Vietnam that could be from the engines of the MH370. But on Monday, a Malaysian official said that chemistry lab analysis of the samples taken from the slicks showed that the oil was not from the missing plane and was a type used by ships. The slick, from which the samples were collected, was about 185km north off Malaysia's east coast state of Kelantan and just south of the point where air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.

False sighting 2: Life raft

On Monday, Malaysia said it had dispatched ships to investigate a report that an aircraft had seen a floating object that could be a life raft. This was 130km south-west of Vietnam's Tho Chu island. But a Vietnamese rescue helicopter sent to investigate found the object was a moss-covered cap of a cable reel.

False sighting 3: Chinese satellite pictures

On Wednesday, China said its satellites had detected three large floating objects in a suspected crash site. But Vietnamese and Malaysian planes sent to scan the waters where the "suspicious floating objects" had been photographed found nothing on Thursday.

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