Flight MH370 'on autopilot moments before crash' say investigators as search moves south

The Australian search team says the plane was on autopilot because it cut such an "orderly" path southwards

Lost: Rescue teams are still searching for the missing plane

Missing flight MH370 was in 'autopilot' mode moments before it crashed, investigators have claimed.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister gave the update as he announced a new search for the passenger jet will resume in August.

The Boeing 777, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

Warren Truss said the new search will shift further south in the Indian Ocean along a narrow arc identified as the most likely resting place of the plane.

"The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircraft last communicated with satellite," he said.

"We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc based on these calculations."

Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the aeroplane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before eventually crashing into the Indian Ocean.

The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard along a final arc where analysis of satellite data put its last location.

But a month later, officials conceded the wreckage was not in that concentrated area, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia, and the search area would have to be expanded.

"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," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.

 

Truss said the new priority search area was determined after a review of satellite data and early radar information as the plane suddenly diverted across the Malaysian peninsular and headed south into one of the remotest areas of the planet.

"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 the satellite sightings," Truss told reporters in Canberra.

Two vessels, one Chinese and one from Dutch engineering company Fugro are currently mapping the seafloor along the arc, where depths exceed 5,000 metres in parts.

The next phase of the search mission is expected to start in August and take a year, covering some 60,000 sq kilometres of ocean at a cost of $56 million or more.

The search is already the most expensive in aviation history.