Malaysians Prime Minister Najib Razak has hinted that the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 was almost certainly hijacked.
Malaysians Prime Minister Najib Razak has hinted that the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 was almost certainly hijacked. Reuters

After failing to find the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 in a defined area of the southern Indian Ocean, Australian officials have revised the search to a zone identified as the 7th arc.

According to the map released on Thursday by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the new search zone was based on further analysis of the satellite data from Inmarsat on the flight path of the missing Boeing 777 jet, CBS News reports.

The missing jet had a 00:19 local time stamp when it reached the 7th arc, during which it exhausted its fuel and descended, according to the ATSB statement.

Prior to this new information, the focus on the search was more than 60,000 square kilometres of ocean floor scoured by the unmanned Bluefin 21 underwater vehicle, a U.S. Navy robotic submarine. However, the search, based on pings which turned out not to have originated from the black box of the missing aircraft, yielded zero result.

ATSB said this new information would help narrow the search zone in the coming weeks. By August, the agency hopes to start a new search in which it would scan about 21,500 square miles of ocean floor using more advanced sonar equipment.

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