Updated

An official says a Chinese ship equipped with advanced sonar equipment will join the search for the Malaysian airliner that disappeared in the southern Indian Ocean almost two years ago.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said in a statement Friday the ship will leave Singapore on Sunday and join the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 by late February.

The ship has state-of-the-art Synthetic Aperture Sonar. Some experts have been critical that standard 75 kHz side-scan sonar devises used to scan most of the area searched so far are not as accurate.

The plane vanished on March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing. A wing flap found on the other side of the Indian Ocean on Reunion Island is the only debris recovered.