The southern Indian Ocean, where investigators suspect missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 may have come down, is one place where a commercial airliner can crash without a ship spotting it, a radar plotting it or even a satellite picking it up.

A missing Malaysian airliner was likely to have been deliberately steered to a course that could have taken it anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysia's prime minister said on Saturday.

As the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner shifts to the vast expanses of the Indian Ocean, the hunt for an Air France plane that vanished over the Atlantic in 2009 provides some sobering lessons.

New images released by the Chinese government show three large objects that may be wreckage debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.