PERTH, April 7 -- Up to nine military planes, three civil planes and 14 ships will assist in Monday's search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) for the international search efforts said.

The search area is expected to be approximately 234,000 square kilometers, and weather is expected to be fine throughout the day with showers in the afternoon although this is not expected to affect the search.

According to the JACC, Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield is continuing investigations in its own area, and British HMS Echo is en route to assist the Chinese vessel Haixun 01, which detected pulse signals in the Indian Ocean.

A Chinese IL-76 transport aircraft took off at about 6:00 local time (22:00 on Sunday GMT) from the Perth International Airport to conduct searching in an area about 2,000 kilometers to Perth, according to a press liaison official with China's embassy to Australia.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau continues to refine the area where the aircraft entered the water based on continuing ground-breaking and multi-disciplinary technical analysis of satellite communication and aircraft performance, passed from the international air crash investigative team comprising analysts from Malaysia, the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Australia.