MH370 An upgrade in satellite services would not have helped to locate the missing flight MH370, said Malaysian Airlines chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

Contrary to earlier reports that the upgrade would provide information crucial to the search, Jauhari said it is merely an upgrade in bandwidth – the amount of data transmitted per second between an aircraft and the communications satellites overhead.

"For the current system that we have, we do know that it currently fulfils all our operational requirements. That is just an upgrade.

"We just need more information, but we don't think that even if we have the system, it would help with our current situation," he told the daily press conference on the crisis today.

He said this when asked about a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) on Thursday quoting an unnamed "satellite industry official".

The report stated that the upgrade dubbed "Swift" wholesales for USD10 (RM33) and would have continued to send data such as the aircraft's speed, direction and altitude even if other systems had been turned off.

The missing Boeing 777-200ER is believed to have disappeared with little trace by turning off its transponder and Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars).

Investigators were only able to narrow down its probable location to two large arcs spanning from Central Asia to the Southern Indian Ocean based on vague clues provided by a communications satellite's hourly "pings" to the aircraft.

Transcript 'inaccurate'

Meanwhile, Department of Civil Aviation director-general Azharuddin Abdul Rahman ( left ) said a purported transcript between MH370 co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and air traffic controllers published in The Telegraph today is "inaccurate".

He stopped short of saying that the transcript is bogus even when asked to clarify his statement.

The 54-minute transcript of radio communication reveals nothing unusual, the report read, and includes a note warning that the English-language transcript is a translation from a Chinese-language transcript, which in turn is based on the English-language original, and therefore the wording may not be exact.

Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein added that he could not reveal the exact transcript because it is still under investigation.

"I can however confirm that the transcript does not indicate anything abnormal," he said.

Asked about a shipment of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries on board Flight MH370, Jauhari Yahya insisted that the cargo is not hazardous despite previous incidents where it had caught fire.

"As far as we are concerned, this is non-hazardous cargo as long as you handle the cargo in accordance to very specific and very strict guidelines laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

"This is done by every airline," he added.

Hishammuddin earlier told the press conference today that preliminary investigations on MH370’s cargo manifest did not reveal any possible link between the aircraft’s cargo and its disappearance.

"As was stated yesterday, all cargo carried on MH370 was in compliance with ICAO and IATA standards," he said.