Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Not in Area Believed to be Final Resting Place

The area of the Indian Ocean where the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was believed to have crashed is not the right place, officials said Thursday.

Since Flight 370 disappeared in early March, search parties have been looking in various parts of that body of water to no avail.

Now that the search has been completed, it is clear that it is not the plane’s final resting place, Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre reported.

Originally, officials believed that acoustic pings heard in that zone in April were from the ill-fated jetliner’s black boxes.  This led to an intense search in a 328-square-mile (850-square-kilometer) swath of the sea.

“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” the agency said in a statement.

The plane disappeared without a trace and there has been no plausible explanation as to what caused its disappearance.

Following the discovery of the four pings believed to be from the plane’s black box, a consortium of countries conducted an air and search and the ocean’s floor was scoured by the Bluefin 21, an autonomous underwater vehicle, towed by the vessel Ocean Shield

Officials now believe the pings did not come from the missing plane’s onboard data or cockpit voice recorders, but instead came from a source unrelated to the aircraft.

When the pings were heard in early April, officials were cautiously optimistic.  The head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre called the signals “the most promising lead” in the search.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)