Search for MH370 to wind up in May

Danica Weeks had rejected the US$50,000 compensation offer from Malaysia Airlines. Photo / AP, supplied

Investigators searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 say they could finish scouring the priority zone by May, more than a year after it vanished, if there are no delays with vessels, equipment and weather.

The Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) told AAP yesterda that decisions about the future of the search would continue to be made in collaboration between Malaysia, China and Australia.

Last week, families of the 239 passengers and crew on board the March 8 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing provided DNA samples to assist in identifying loved ones once the plane was found.

A computer-animated video and sonar images of the Indian Ocean seabed where the search has been focused has also been released.

The latest JACC update said the survey vessel Fugro Equator was continuing to map the ocean floor and would return to Fremantle when it completes its current phase this month.

About 200,000 square kilometres of the search area has been surveyed so far.

Fugro Discovery arrived back in the search area on December 4, while GO Phoenix returned last Tuesday, and both have recommenced underwater search operations.

Danica Weeks, whose Kiwi husband Paul was on the missing flight, wrote an article for the Sunday Times.

She said when she and her two young children said goodbye to him they never thought it would be for the last time.

"But now, March 7 is permanently engraved in my mind and often on rewind," she wrote.

"Not only as the day we kissed Paul goodbye at Perth Airport, but because mentally, for me, it is still March 7."

Ms Weeks said not knowing what really happened to her husband continued to haunt her.

"Every waking minute, your mind runs scenarios of what might have happened," she said.

"You are searching the news constantly for any small piece of information that may give you a clue to their whereabouts, and your heart pounds every time the phone rings. Is this it? Have they found something?"

- AAP