MH370: New underwater search location to be prioritised further south
Flight MH370, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members left the KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8, and disappeared from radar about an hour later while over the South China Sea.
Underwater search for the seven-month missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was now prioritised to an area further south on the 'seventh arc' search area in the Indian Ocean.
The decision was confirmed based on the latest analyses undertaken by a team from the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Malaysia.
An official report detailing on the analyses was released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which spearheaded the search operation, today.
According to the report, the new search location was the result of further refinement on the satellite communication data and information from an unanswered ground-to-air telephone call 17 minutes after the last radar information.
"The update provides a key input to the ATSB's planning and direction of current underwater search activities," it said.
The report further stated that, ongoing examination and analysis of the Satcom data and end-of-flight simulations will anyhow continue and may result in changes to search asset deployment.
Flight MH370, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members left the KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8, and disappeared from radar about an hour later while over the South China Sea.
It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.
The Boeing 777 aircraft however has yet to be found, even after an exhaustive search in the southern Indian Ocean where it is believed to have gone down after veering off course.
The search for the aircraft is ongoing, with no concrete evidence has been found yet.
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