New MH370 Search? Missing Plane Will 'For Sure' Be Found, Possibly In New Area, Investigator Says

The lengthy international search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 concluded without results this month, but at least one investigator has already started talking about the possibility of a new one.

Paul Kennedy, the project director for Fugro, the company that conducted the 120,000-square-kilometer sweep of the Indian Ocean floor for debris from the plane, told the Australian recently it "wouldn't take [him] long at all" to get together a team to check over additional areas for MH370.

"She'll be found, for sure," Kennedy said of the flight, which mysteriously vanished in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Kennedy was referring to a December report by aviation experts that caused the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to admit it had likely been looking in the wrong place for MH370. Bureau commissioner Greg Hood said earlier this week that it was "highly likely" the area identified in that report, due northeast of the previous search perimeter, contained the aircraft.

However, whether ministers from the three countries involved in the hunt — Australia, Malaysia and China — would agree to finance additional search operations remained dubious.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai told reporters Thursday they suspended the search in order to "go back to the drawing board" and re-examine all the data collected over the past few years, the Star Online reported.

"Only when we are confident of the plane’s exact location, will we move in. At the moment, we do not have the data to show us its exact location," Liow said. "What the expert team gave us is just the probable area. We can’t make a decision based only on that."

So far, the only wreckage confirmed to be from MH370 has been turned in by unofficial sources. Amateur searchers have found a flaperon, outboard flaps, a nose cowling segment, a tail panel and interior panel analysts have said are "definitely" or "almost certainly" from the missing plane, BBC News reported.