Fourth ship to join search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

CANBERRA - A fourth ship with specialized underwater equipment will join the search for a Malaysia Airlines jet 10 months after it vanished under mysterious circumstances off the west coast of Australia, an official said Monday.

The ship Fugro Supporter was on its way to the search area after conducting trials off the Indonesian island of Bali, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement.

"Fugro Supporter has been equipped with a Kongsberg HUGIN 4500 autonomous underwater vehicle," the statement said. "The AUV will be used to scan those portions of the search area that cannot be searched effectively by the equipment on other vessels."

Not a single trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been found since the Boeing 777 vanished with 239 people aboard on March 8 last year during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The jetliner disappeared after veering off course and flying for hours with its communications systems disabled.

Three ships - two provided by a Dutch contractor and one from Malaysia - have already been tasked with scouring a desolate, 60,000-square-kilometer (23,000-square-mile) area of the Indian Ocean about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Australia.

Since a renewed search began in October, the ships have searched more than 12,000 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) of the seafloor - or one-fifth of the highest-priority search zone.

Government officials could not immediately say whether the additional ship would hasten the search, which was expected to end around May if nothing was found earlier.

The Fugro Supporter is jointly funded by the Australian and Malaysian governments. It is expected to join the search in late January, Truss said.