Where Is Flight MH370? Crashed Malaysia Airlines Plane ‘Highly Likely’ To Be North Of Suspended Search Zone, ATSB Chief Says

Wreckage of the crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is "highly likely" to be somewhere north of the area where the nearly three-year long search was suspended last Tuesday, according to the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

"It's highly likely that the area now defined by the experts contains the aircraft, but that's not absolutely for certain," Greg Hood, the ATSB chief, said Monday, adding that the bureau would have continued the search for the missing plane if the search was not called off by governments in Malaysia, Australia and China.

Flight MH370, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, went missing March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. The extensive search, which cost $150 million, yielded no evidence about where the plane had gone. Authorities have only discovered debris pieces of the missing jet on western Indian Ocean shorelines — believed to be from a Boeing 777-200 jet. Officials have come across several wreckage over the past months and of these, six pieces have been considered certain or highly likely to be from the ill-fated Flight MH370.

Last Tuesday, the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China, suspended the search, causing uproar among the families of the missing jet’s passengers.

However, the Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester defended the decision to stop the underwater search.

"If we came to the public and said we want to spend another 30, 40 or 50 million on a search in an area where we're not sure we're going to find the aircraft, people would criticize us for that. And having made the decision to suspend the search we're open to the criticism then as well, so it is a difficult decision," Chester said.