FILE - In this March 30, 2014 file photo, Australian navy ship Ocean Shield lies docked at naval base HMAS Stirling while being fitted with a towed pinger locator to aid in her roll in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in Perth, Australia. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)
The Australian agency in charge of the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has said that the area where several "pings" thought to come from the aircraft's black boxes were detected is not the final resting place of the plane.
The Joint Agency Coordination Center said Thursday the U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21 had finished its final underwater mission in the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday after scouring 330 square miles without finding any sign of the plane that vanished March 8 with 239 people on board.
Satellite analysis led authorities to believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had diverted sharply from its flight path and flew south to the Indian Ocean.
Officials had described the detection of four series of "pings" in the area that the satellite data indicated was the likely crash site as their best lead in the search. The signals appeared to be consistent with those from aircraft black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings. The locator beacons have a battery life of about a month, so it is presumed they have died.
That's led organizers to expand the search area from a 155-square mile patch of seabed based on where the signals were believed to have come from to a much wider expanse of 21,600 square miles based on satellite analysis -- an area that will take eight months to a year to search with new, more powerful sonar equipment that is being brought to the region. It wasn't clear when this new phase of the search would start.
Earlier Thursday, a U.S. Navy spokesman dismissed as "speculative and premature" an American expert's reported comments that the acoustic "pings" at the center of the search for the missing Malaysian plane did not come from the jet's black boxes.
CNN reported that the Navy's civilian deputy director of ocean engineering, Michael Dean, said most countries now agreed that the sounds detected by the Navy's Towed Ping Locator in April in the southern Indian Ocean came from a man-made source unrelated to the jet.
Earlier this week, the Malaysian government released reams of raw satellite data it used to determine that the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean, a step long demanded by the families of some of the passengers on board. The conclusion is based on complex calculations derived largely from brief hourly transmissions, or "handshakes," between the plane and a communications satellite operated by the British company Inmarsat.
But while the 45 pages of information may help satisfy a desire for more transparency in a much criticized investigation, experts say it's unlikely to solve the mystery of Flight 370. Theories range from mechanical failure to hijacking or pilot murder-suicide.
The families of the victims -- many of whom have been highly critical of the Malaysian government and, in the absence of any wreckage, have been unwilling to accept that their loved ones are dead -- had been asking for the raw satellite data for many weeks so it could be examined by independent experts. Malaysia initially balked at doing so, but then reconsidered.
The release of the information came as the underwater hunt for the jet is poised to pause until later in the summer while new, powerful sonar equipment is obtained, a sign of just how difficult it will be to locate the jet and finally get some answers on the mystery. The Australian search coordination center on Wednesday declined to tell The Associated Press when the new phase of the search would start, saying a media statement would be provided in the near future.
The agency's statement comes hours after a U.S. Navy spokesman dismissed as "speculative and premature" an American expert's reported comments that the acoustic "pings" at the center of the search for the missing Malaysian plane did not come from the jet's black boxes.
CNN reported that the Navy's civilian deputy director of ocean engineering, Michael Dean, said most countries now agreed that the sounds detected by the Navy's Towed Ping Locator in April in the southern Indian Ocean came from a man-made source unrelated to the jet.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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