Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has come under fire over its decision to break the bad news on the missing Flight MH370 via text message to family-members of passengers.

The airline said the text message, in both Chinese and English, was sent as "additional" means of contact, after most family-members in Beijing had been contacted by telephone or in person.

However, an image of the text message published by the American and Australian media show very poor translation of the English version into Chinese.

A note at the bottom in the Chinese version states that it is a computer-generated translation.

‘Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived,” reads the English version.

‘As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia's Prime Minister, we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean.’

It is unclear why MAS could not get in contact with families in Beijing to break the news in person, as it had been reported those who received the text message were all at the Lido Hotel where they have been staying since the plane was reported missing on March 8.

In Malaysia, families told reporters that they were informed to watch the ‘live’ telecast of Najib's announcement, which was in English.

It is learnt that a mother of one of the Malaysian passengers was forced to contact a reporter to ask what Najib had announced, as she does not understand English.

MAS is due to hold a press conference at KLIA at 12.30pm today to provide further details.

Meanwhile, UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported that investigators believe Flight MH370 was an "apparent suicide mission". However, the claim has not been verified.

Quoting ‘official sources’ within the investigation, its correspondent in Kuala Lumpur reported that the aircraft was flown in a "deliberate" and "rational" manner to a point in the Indian Ocean.

The report said that, when asked about the possibility of on-board fire, the ‘official source’ had said: “It just does not hinge together ... (The investigators) have gone through processes you do to get the plane where it flew to for eight hours. They point to it being flown in a rational way.”

Najib last night announced that investigators have concluded that the plane "ended" in the southern Indian Ocean, after using never-used-before calculations based on Inmarsat satellite image provider data.