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Malaysia Airlines is in talks to rent out its A380 superjumbos to religious travel groups for Haj and Umrah pilgrimages, its CE said, in a move likely to trim financial losses and dispel some recent gloom over demand for the huge jets. Malaysia Airlines has 6 of the jetliners but says the Airbus jet does not make economic sense for it at a time when it is cost-cutting as part of a restructuring. Past attempts to sell the planes have failed. CE Peter Bellew said the airline was in talks about a possible "wet lease" deal with a number of religious travel organisations that would hire Malaysia Airlines aircraft and crew to fly people on the Haj and Umrah pilgrimages. Talks between Malaysia Airlines and the potential customers started about 10 weeks ago and Bellew said he is confident of reaching an agreement before the end of December. <br/>

A ship involved with the deep-sea sonar search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is being fitted with a drone that will examine several sonar contacts of interest on the remote seabed west of Australia, officials said Wednesday. None of the sonar contacts exhibit the characteristics of a typical aircraft debris field, said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the hunt for the Boeing 777 in a desolate stretch of the Indian Ocean. But some of the contacts do exhibit man-made properties and therefore must be investigated before they can be eliminated as having come from the plane, the agency said. More than 20 sonar contacts that crews have picked up in recent months require closer examination by a sonar-equipped underwater drone. <br/>