Malaysia jet search to resume further south in Indian Ocean

The search for Malaysian Airlines jet that disappeared on 8 March will resume in a new area in the Indian Ocean further south after the operation was suspended late last month.

Authorities concede that the decision to move to an area as much as 600 miles south from where ships and planes have been deployed since early April was based on educated guesswork, given the limited data about the final movements of Flight 370 after it went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board.

The shift comes as private contractors ready plans to take over what would be the largest undersea search mission in history, with a deadline for bids on Monday. Authorities are offering up to 60 million Australian dollars (US$56 million) for a company or research organization to carry out a search over 20,000 square miles of remote ocean using sonar equipment that may take as long as 300 days to complete.

The new search area runs from the South East Indian Ridge in the south—a narrow area of sea that has been mapped by U.S. researchers in the 1990s—through a deep abyssal plain to just west of the Broken Ridge, which is in places as shallow as 900m.