Setback in Indian Ocean search for missing airliner

The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner suffered a further setback after Australian officials said wreckage from the aircraft was not on the seabed in the area they had identified.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared from radar screens on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with, including the loss of communications, suggests the Boeing 777 was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route.

The search was narrowed last month after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane’s black box recorders were heard near where analysis of satellite data put its last location, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia.

“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 judgement, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” the agency in charge of the search said.

ATSB chief Martin Dolan said he expected the team to take two to three weeks to reassess and re-analySe the data, although he was “confident” that the final resting place of the aircraft was the Indian Ocean.

Michael Dean, the US Navy’s deputy director of ocean engineering, said: “Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator.”