Relatives of missing Flight MH370 passengers fly to Madagascar to 'take search into own hands'

'We need to know what happened to this plane and what happened to the people that we love'

Malaysian Grace Subathirai Nathan (L), whose mother Anne Daisy was on board flight MH370, holds a banner with next-of-kin Jiang Hui of China (EPA)

The relatives of passengers aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing more than two years ago have travelled to Madagascar to take the search into their own hands.

Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 passengers and crew after leaving Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on 8 March 2014.

So far just 20 pieces of debris have been found, but no major wreckage from the plane has been discovered.

A search for the wreckage in the south Indian Ocean entered its 1000th day on Saturday.

"It has fallen into our hands to take this search upon ourselves," said Grace Subathirai Nathan, a spokeswoman for the Members of Voice 370, an MH370 next-of-kin support group, after arriving in Madagascar.

"After repeated requests for mobilisation of a search along the east African coastline, nothing has been done to date.

"We want to speak to as many people as we can. We want to especially speak to NGOs, to the missionaries, to the churches who have outreach programmes.

"We can talk to people who work as fishermen, people who live on the coastline. We hope that we can raise awareness, teach them how to identify debris, how to collect debris, what to do with it when they find it.”

Ms Nathan, whose mother was on the plane, was among four Malaysians, two Chinese nationals and a Frenchman who arrived in Madagascar on Saturday to hunt for debris and raise awareness of the plane among local communities.

They plan to distribute brochures educating local people on how to identify plane debris.

Three pieces of debris found on the beaches of Mauritius, Tanzania and the French island of Reunion, have been confirmed to be from MH370.

Investigators are examining several other pieces found in Mozambique and South Africa.

The group hopes the trip will encourage the Malaysian, Chinese and Australian governments to collect debris along the continental coast where parts from the air craft have been found.

MH370 next-of-kin, Grace Subathirai Nathan of Malaysia (C) and Jiang Hui (L) and Bai Shuan Fu (R) from China attend a press conference at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia (EPA)

The search is expected to be suspended by the end of the year, when an Australian-led team completes its scouring of a 120,000-sq-km target area.

"We need to know what happened to this plane and what happened to the people that we love," Ms Nathan said.

Last month, new information published in a report supported the investigators’ long-held theory that pilots were not at the controls of the Boeing 777 when it ran out of fuel.

The report, from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said the plane’s flaps were not extended when it crashed, ruling out a controlled descent.

Data from the final communications with the aircraft was “consistent with the aircraft being in a high and increasing rate of descent at that time,” the report says.

This scenario means the plane would have plummeted at high speed into the Indian Ocean.

Additional reporting by agencies