MH370 north of search?

Photo: The Canadian Press

Analysis of a genuine Boeing 777 wing flap has reaffirmed experts' opinion that a missing Malaysian airliner most likely crashed north of an abandoned search area in the Indian Ocean, officials said Friday.

The $160 million search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended in January after a deep-sea sonar scan of 120,000 square kilometres of ocean floor southwest of Australia failed to find any trace of the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 people aboard on March 8, 2014. But research has continued in an effort to refine a possible new search.

Australian government oceanographers had obtained a wing flap of the same model as the original and studied how that part drifted in the ocean, the Australian Transport safety Bureau said in a statement. Previous drift modeling used inexact replicas.

The new analysis confirmed findings released in December that the airliner had likely crashed north of the searched area.

The December findings were based in part on drift analysis of six replicas of a piece of Flight 370 known as a flaperon which was found on Reunion Island in the west Indian Ocean in July 2015.