Missing MH370: Search for plane shifts after new lead

An international air and sea taskforce hunting for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was re-directed on Friday to an area 1,100 km (685 miles) north of where they have been searching for more than a week, after Australian authorities received new radar information from Malaysia.

The dramatic shift in the search area, moving it further than the distance between London and Berlin, followed analysis of radar data that showed the missing plane had travelled faster, and so would have run out of fuel quicker, than previously thought.

The new search area is larger, but closer to the Australian west coast city of Perth, allowing aircraft to spend longer on site by shortening travel times. It is also vastly more favourable in terms of the weather as it is out of the deep sea region known as the Roaring 40s for its huge seas and frequent storm-force winds.

"I'm not sure that we'll get perfect weather out there, but it's likely to be better more often than what we've seen in the past," John Young, general manager of the emergency response division of Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), told reporters, adding the previous search site was being abandoned.

"We have moved on from those search areas to the newest credible lead," he said.

For more than a week, ships and surveillance planes have been scouring seas 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, where satellite images had suggested there could be debris from Flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 with 239 people aboard.