HANOI (REUTERS) - A Vietnamese rescue helicopter has retrieved a floating yellow object from the sea and determined it was not a life raft from a missing Malaysian plane, as was earlier suspected, the country's civil aviation authority said on Monday.

"It has salvaged the object, at the notice and request by Malaysia's rescue centre, 130 km south-west of Tho Chu island. The object has been identified as a moss-covered cap of a cable reel," the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website.

It did not specify whether or not the object was part of a plane but said photographs would be sent to its command centre.

Vietnam scrambled two helicopters from southern Phu Quoc island on Monday afternoon to retrieve the item spotted earlier by a search plane.