KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 ― The search for the missing Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean has been hampered by a lack of satellite images of the new search area, the New York Times (NYT) said yesterday.

According to the paper, investigators have failed to find any satellite image of the plane while it was still flying. There are also no images of the plane in the first week of its disappearance.

While investigators said the lack of images were no surprise as satellites typically capture images of land rather than oceans, the NYT said images of the southern Indian Ocean immediately after the plane mysteriously went missing on March 8 would have been used to look out for debris.

But satellite images of the southern Indian Ocean were only captured a week after MH370 disappeared ― when Malaysia called off a search at the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca, shifting focus to the southern Indian Ocean.

The paper cited Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan as saying that the bureau is “confident that it received all available information that might inform its assessment and determination of the search area”.

Commercial survey ship Fugro Equator is now slowly mapping the southern Indian Ocean floor to prevent deep-sea search vehicles from hitting obstacles during the MH370 search.

Australia, which has been heading a joint effort to find the plane, is expected to announce the new search zone by this month.

Beijing-bound Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar on March 8 slightly more than an hour after departing from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Malaysian authorities said radar data indicated that the plane with 239 people onboard had diverted from its intended path and headed towards the southern Indian Ocean, the projected location of the Boeing 777.

Putrajaya and Malaysia Airlines have been heavily criticised domestically and abroad for  handling of the disaster, with critics pointing to the government’s slow response and lack of coordination in the search and rescue operations.

The plane’s disappearance has been touted as civil aviation’s greatest mystery.