Where Is Flight MH370? Missing Plane's Location Reduced To 3 ‘Hot Spots’

Days after a refined area in the southern Indian Ocean was pointed out as the possible location where the missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 may be resting, it remains unclear whether a new search operation will be launched to find the plane.

The revised area is concentrated in just three “hot spots,” David Griffin, an Australian scientist, told the Daily Beast.

On Aug. 16, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which had been leading the search for the plane, said French satellites captured possible man-made objects floating in the ocean north of the official 46,000 sq miles search zone days after the plane went missing in 2014.

Griffin, who was part of the team that narrowed down the search zone, told the Daily Beast that the new resting point for the plane falls within two strips of ocean just 62 miles long and between 12 to 18 miles wide. The reduced search area is less than a third of the original search zone where search vessels had been looking for the plane for more than three years before the hunt was called off in January.

“Consistent with our commitment to the public release of information pertaining to the search for MH370, we have today released two reports, prepared by Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization],” Greg Hood, chief commissioner of the ATSB, said on Aug. 16. “They provide analysis and findings relating to satellite imagery taken on March 23, 2014, two weeks after the disappearance of MH370, over the southern Indian Ocean.”

“Geoscience Australia identified a number of objects in the satellite imagery which have been classified as probably man-made,” Hood added. “The image resolution is not high enough to be certain whether the objects originated from MH370 or are other objects that might be found floating in oceans around the world.”

Griffin said in his report that the dimensions of the objects “are comparable with some of the debris items and their location makes them impossible to ignore” but added, “there is no evidence to confirm that any of these objects (let alone all) are pieces of the aircraft.”

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. In January, the Australian Minister of Transport Darren Chester announced that the search was “suspended” as the underwater search yielded no concrete clue.

The only positive clue about the plane's disappearance came when debris pieces washed up on the shores of islands in the Indian Ocean. But these too could not shed light as to what may have happened to the doomed Boeing 777-200.

Since the plane's disappearance several conspiracy theories have surfaced about the jet, with some saying that the pilot deliberately crashed the plane while others hinted at a hijack. However, authorities confirmed none of the theories.