In a 55-page report, the Australian Transport Safety Board outlined how investigators² had arrived at this conclusion after comparing the conditions on the flight with previous disasters, although it contained no new evidence from within the jetliner.

 

The report narrowed down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications and the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight.

 

"Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370's flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction," the ATSB report said.

 

All of that suggested that the plane most likely crashed farther south into the Indian Ocean than previously³ thought, Australian officials also said, leading them to announce a shift farther south within the prior search area.

 

The new analysis comes more than 100 days after the Boeing 777, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

 

Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately⁴ diverted thousands of kilometers from its scheduled route before eventually plunging⁵ into the Indian Ocean.

 

The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic⁶ 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 wreckage⁷ was not in that concentrated area, some 1,600 km 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 told reporters in Canberra.

 

Truss said the area was determined⁸ after a review of satellite data, early radar⁹ information and aircraft performance limits after the plane diverted across the Malaysian peninsula 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 said.

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