Investigators looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 said Thursday that the jet isn't in the 330-square-mile area of ocean where a massive search effort has been focused since early April. A U.S. Navy underwater drone completed its search Wednesday in an area of the southern Indian Ocean where officials thought they heard four "pings" emitting from the plane's missing black box, but have concluded that those noises didn't come from the device.
"The area can now be discounted as the final resting place," said the Australian-based Joint Agency Coordination Center in a statement. The pings were likely coming from a ship in the area, an U.S. Navy official said. Searchers will now shift their focus to an area in the Indian Ocean as large as 23,000 square miles. However, that effort won't begin until investigators have fully mapped the huge swath of ocean, which could take up to three months.
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