China has offered Taiwan radar data to help piece together the final moments of an airliner which crashed into the Taiwan Straits on 25 May with the loss of 225 lives.

Two senior Taiwanese politicians have flown to Beijing to collect the data on an unofficial mission which circumvents the chill in relations at government level.

No survivors have been found from the China Airlines Boeing 747-200 which disintegrated in mid-flight about 20 minutes after take-off on a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on 25 May.

The remains of 102 people have been recovered so far as the search continues for bodies and wreckage.

Mu Ming-chu, a member of the Taiwanese parliament from the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), left along with a KMT colleague, Wang Su-yun, left for Beijing on Sunday.

They are due to receive the data at Beijing airport from civil aviation officials and return home the same day, the AFP news agency reports, quoting a Taiwanese official.

An official Taiwanese Government request to Beijing for information earlier in the week was reportedly met with silence.

Hunt for black boxes

Taiwan's own radar data shows the plane was cruising above 9,160 metres (30,000 feet) when it was ripped apart.

Security services on the island have ruled out a terrorist attack, stray missile, bad weather or air traffic control problems as possible causes of the crash.

Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council has been asking both Beijing and Washington to provide radar and satellite data to help pinpoint the plane's black boxes and wreckage.

Search operations have been delayed by choppy seas and less than half of the bodies of those aboard and 1% of the aircraft have been found.

The government announced on Saturday that searchers had discovered wreckage believed to be the plane's nose.

The search is focusing on the black boxes - the watertight cockpit voice and flight data recorders.

Officials believe they are lying 67 metres under the sea off Penghu Island.