Joint Agency Coordination Centre

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) is an Australian government agency which was established on 30 March 2014 to coordinate search and recovery operations for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on 8 March 2014 and was soon thereafter determined to have ended in the Southern Indian Ocean, within Australia's concurrent aeronautical and maritime search and rescue regions.

On 8 March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China with 239 persons aboard; a search in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand was promptly initiated near the aircraft's last voice contact with air traffic control and final contact with secondary radar (the type of radar used by air traffic control).

[1]: 1–3  A week after the disappearance, Malaysia announced that military radar determined that the aircraft had traveled west across the Malay Peninsula after being lost by air traffic control.

The Australian government has budgeted A$2 million over two years to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development for costs related to the JACC.

[7] After the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in July 2014, Houston left the agency when he was appointed as Australia's special envoy in Ukraine to recover and repatriate bodies of Australian victims, assist relatives of Australian victims, and ensure that a proper investigation of the crash was initiated in accordance with international standards.

[1]: 1 [7][8] The search activities also involved analysis of the flight's satellite communications by Inmarsat, the AAIB (UK), the NTSB (US), and other organisations.

[20] In addition to search information, the JACC serves as a liaison with the passengers' families to provide visas, counselling, accommodation assistance, and interpretation services.

A bathymetric map of the southeastern Indian Ocean and western Australia, with the locations of search zones, sonobouy drops, and calculated flight paths. An inset in the upper left shows the path of the ADV Ocean Shield which towed a Towed Pinger Locator and where it detected acoustic signals; the same inset also shows the seafloor sonar search performed in April–May 2014.
The shifting search zones for Flight 370 in the Southern Indian Ocean. The inset shows the path of taken by the vessel ADV Ocean Shield operating a towed pinger locator, acoustic detections, and the sonar search. The current underwater phase (both the wide area search and priority area) is shown in pink.
Angus Houston speaking at Joint Agency Coordination Centre press conference in Perth on 14 April 2014