Australian officials are dismissing reports by a marine exploration company that wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 might have been located in the Bay of Bengal, thousands of miles north of the search area where the plane is presumed to have gone down.
GeoResonance, a private firm based in Australia, said earlier this week that in its own search for the jetliner that disappeared from radar on March 8, it had had found what appeared to be plane wreckage near Bangladesh.
"The company is not declaring this is MH370, however it should be investigated," GeoResonance said in a statement.
The company says it gave the information to Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian and Chinese diplomats in Australia on March 31 and to the Australian search team on April 4.
"The company and its directors are surprised by the lack of response from the various authorities," GeoResonance said.
But Angus Houston, the head of the search in the southern Indian Ocean, off Australia's west coast, said Wednesday that he believes that's where the plane went down.
"I think that we have been looking in the right place," Houston told Sky New Australia. "I'm confident the aircraft will be found."
On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search for Flight MH370, with 239 people aboard, had entered a "new phase" and that after weeks of searching visually for floating debris, it is "highly unlikely" that any would ever be found.
"We are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area," Abbott said.
Abbott also acknowledged that it was possible that the fate of the airliner might never be discovered.
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