MH370: Scientists narrow search area to three spots

Canberra, August 16 

Scientists have potentially narrowed the search area for the missing Malaysian airliner to three specific locations in the southern Indian Ocean, through new satellite and drift analysis of the 2014 crash released today.

But the Australian Transport Safety Bureau cautioned that the drift analysis by Australian science agency CSIRO is based on French satellite images of “probably man-made” floating objects without evidence that they were from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

But the locations could provide potential starting points to search within a 25,000-sq-km expanse identified by a panel of experts in November as the most likely resting place of the Boeing 777 and the 239 passengers and crew on board.

That expanse adjoins the original search zone far southwest of Australia that was identified through satellite analysis of the final hours of the flight that apparently ended when the plane ran out of fuel.

Malaysia, China and Australia agreed to suspend the deep-sea sonar search in January after 120,000 sq km of seabed were combed without finding any trace of Flight 370. The new analysis is based on French military satellite images gathered on March 23, 2014, two weeks after Flight 370 mysteriously veered far off course. — AP