MH 370 search moves south

Australian officials announced in Thursday that the operation to recover wreckage from the missing Boeing 777 would be moved to the southern most region of the current search area.

"The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircraft last communicated with satellite. We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc based on these calculations," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters in Canberra.

"It would be fair to comment that it is highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot, otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through satellite sightings," Truss, who also holds the transport portfolio, added.

At the end of May, officials called off a search of the seafloor ruling out the area after weeks of fruitless labor. The international team led by Australia believed the plane had likely crashed there after picking up a series of four acoustic pings. They subsequently scoured roughly 850 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the southern Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously disappeared on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. According to satellite data, the aircraft - which had 239 people on board - flew off course and likely crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, off of the west coast of Australia.

kms/pfd (AP, AFP, Reuters)