Search Area For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Can Now Be Discounted.

The 850-square-kilometer swath of the Indian Ocean where officials have focused their hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 probably isn't the right place, the joint search agency said Thursday.

The area off the coast of western Australia is not the "final resting place of MH370," the Australia-based Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

Officials zeroed in on that zone after acoustic pings originally thought to be from the black boxes of the missing plane were detected in early April.

"The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370," a statement from the JACC said.

But Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss defended the country's efforts in the southern Indian Ocean.

"We are still very confident that the resting place of the aircraft is in the southern ocean and along the seventh ping line," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told parliament Thursday.

"We concentrated the search in this area because the pings and the information we received was the best information we had available at the time. And that is all you can do in circumstances like this ... follow the very best leads."

Unlikely to be from Flight 370

Hours earlier, a U.S. Navy official told CNN that the pings at the center of the search for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes.

The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort in the southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777.

Authorities now almost universally believe the pings did not come from the onboard data or cockpit voice recorders but instead came from some other man-made source unrelated to the jetliner that disappeared on March 8, according to Michael Dean, the Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering.

If the pings had come from the recorders, searchers would have found them, he said.

When asked if other countries involved in the search had reached the same conclusions, Dean said "yes."

Underwater search for MH370 postponed for at least 2 months

"Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," Dean said.

The pinger locator was used by searchers to listen for underwater signals.

 Source:CNN