WELLINGTON, March 27-- The wife of Paul Weeks found out in a text message that her husband had died in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

And Paul Weeks' sister, Sara, despite being the family's spokesperson, had to rely on a call from her mother to hear the news.

Sarah Weeks has hit out at the lack of information from the Malaysian authorities. "The whole situation has been handled appallingly, incredibly insensitively. Everyone is angry about it," Sarah Weeks told Radio Live on Thursday. "The Malaysian government, the airline, it's just all been incredibly poor," she said. "Who's to say they couldn't have located the plane the day that it happened."

A lot of information seemed to have been withheld and information took a very long time to get through, she said.

The Malaysian authorities confirmed two days ago that the plane and its 239 passengers, which disappeared almost three weeks ago, ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean thousands of km west of Perth.

Sarah Weeks said she was called at 3.30 a.m. by her mother to tell her of the development, who was worried she might hear the news of her brother's death from the media.

Paul Weeks, a 39-year-old mechanical engineer based in Perth, was on board MH370, traveling to Mongolia for his first shift in a fly-in-fly-out job.

Paul Weeks was one of two New Zealanders on the flight. The family of Ximin Wang, 50, of Auckland, have asked for privacy.

Meanwhile, satellite images have shown more than 120 pieces of potential debris from the flight in the southern India Ocean. To date, no wreckage has been recovered.