Search for missing plane enters new phase

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott came to the podium on Monday to say what few people looking for debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 wanted to hear.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER TONY ABBOTT SAYING:

"I am now required to say to you that it is highly unlikely, at this stage, that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become water logged and sunk."

So now, a new phase in the unprecedented search to find the plane that went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Moving away from visual searches that look for floating debris and focusing instead on sophisticated underwater sensors, which can scour a much larger area of the ocean floor near where the plane is thought to have crashed.

Malaysia is under pressure to bring closure to the grieving families by finding wreckage and solving the mystery of what happened to Flight 370.

In Kual