Malaysia has dispatched ships to investigate the sighting of a floating object that could be a life raft, as it continues to hunt for a missing airliner, an official said Monday.

Malaysia has dispatched ships to investigate the sighting of a floating object that could be a life raft, as it continues to hunt for a missing airliner, an official said Monday.

"There was a report today that we just received that an aircraft had seen something like an inverted life raft," said Malaysia's head of civil aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

"So we are contacting our counterparts, we are sending ships there to verify the object, the parts."

"At the moment we have not received any report on the matter. So we are still waiting for the report," he said.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared early Saturday morning with 239 people aboard. No distress signal was ever sent, baffled authorities have said.

The plane's disappearance has led to an international search and rescue effort involving several countries and dozens of planes and ships, but so far no firm evidence of wreckage from the plane has been found.