Beijing, March 24 (IANS): A Chinese military aircraft expanded search area in the Indian Ocean Sunday to locate the missing Malaysian jetliner carrying 239 people.

The Chinese Y-8 cargo plane took off from Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang town at 7.20 a.m. local time, and completed a second search mission in the Andaman Sea before returning at around noon, Xinhua quoted the rescue team of the Chinese air force as saying Sunday.

The flight covered a total distance of 2,550 km and a search area of 7,000 square km, 2,000 sq km larger than the first mission carried out Saturday.

The Malaysian aircraft MH370 mysteriously disappeared from radar en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8 with 239 people on board, including 154 Chinese passengers.

The international hunt for the missing plane has shifted to the southern corridor after Australia said Thursday that satellite imagery identified suspicious debris in the southern Indian Ocean.

Part of the Chinese search and rescue operations, meanwhile, continued in the Andaman Sea that falls in the northern corridor stretching approximately from the boarder of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand.