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SYDNEY—Australian authorities have again shifted the search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, after new analysis suggested the plane may have glided further than previously thought after running out of fuel.

The shift adds 21,000 square kilometers (8,108 square miles) of ocean floor to the search zone—an area roughly the size of the state of Vermont—and casts doubt on areas previously scoured by a fleet of ships as part of an expensive underwater search mission that has spanned more than 13 months.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search on behalf of the Malaysian government, said only 54,000 square kilometers of the newly defined area had been searched so far. That leaves a further 44,000 square kilometers to be searched, which will likely take until June.

To date, 76,000 square kilometers of the sea floor has been scanned by towed sonar devices pulled on long cables behind boats, with around a third of that in areas to the north that experts have now discredited.

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the new analysis "built on some of the other research that's been undertaken by international agencies" and drew on "satellite communications data, aircraft dynamics, [and] meteorological data" provided to Australian defense officials by multinational experts.

"The key outcome of this additional work validates what has happened so far," he said Thursday, noting the focus had now shifted to the southern end of the previous search area, and the search area had been widened. An ATSB spokesman said the new search area was now 30 kilometers wider than before.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been missing since March 2014, when it veered sharply off course while on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane was picked up briefly on local radar screens before disappearing over the Indian Ocean. All 239 passengers and crew are presumed dead.

The only debris found from the missing aircraft was a small wing part known as a flaperon that in July was found washed ashore on the Indian Ocean island of Ré union. Experts believe the wing part was carried by strong ocean currents thousands of kilometers west from the search zone off the coast of Western Australia. French authorities are still analyzing the flaperon for clues.

As officials continue searching for the missing Boeing jet, Southeast Asia's aviation industry has been hit by other safety concerns. On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Thailand's aviation industry to category two status after audits revealed lax safety oversight by the nation's aviation regulator. On Tuesday, a report released by Indonesian accident investigators about the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501, which killed 162 people after a high-altitude stall over the Java Sea last December, cast doubt on maintenance and pilot training at the airline. AirAsia said it had made safety changes since the crash to address these problems.

While questions about regional air safety mount, authorities have struggled to provide answers about what happened to Flight 370. And the underwater search for the plane using towed sonar detectors, which began late last year after aerial searches for debris turned up only garbage, has been hit by multiple setbacks.

Scientists and mathematicians have readjusted their assumptions about the where the plane went down a number of times after reanalyzing communications from the plane with an Inmarsat PLC satellite, and reassessing the performance characteristics of the Boeing aircraft with the help of the manufacturer.

Searchers have also faced foul weather, equipment failures and more recently two medical emergencies that have delayed operations.

The new analysis carried out by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group, a government research and development team, raised the possibility that the plane glided as far as 100 nautical miles, or 180 kilometers, from its last point of communication with the Inmarsat PLC satellite.

"If this low probability area is to be searched, further analysis will be needed," the researchers said.

The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China have committed to searching a total of 120,000 square kilometers before suspending the search, after earlier outlining a 60,000 square kilometer search area that relatives of the missing passengers claimed wasn't exhaustive enough.

The Chinese government recently committed to providing an extra ship to the search, alongside 20 million Australian dollars (US$14.6 million) to aid operations. Australia has already pledged A$60 million to carry out the underwater search and in August last year contracted Dutch oil and gas firm Fugro NV to look for the plane. Malaysia has agreed to match Australia's contribution, and hired its own ship which has since left the search.

Other countries including Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand also sent military aircraft and ships to help in the early phases of searching. The combined total cost of the search for Flight 370 is now around A$180 million so far, Australia's deputy prime minister said Thursday.

Write to Daniel Stacey at daniel.stacey@wsj.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 03, 2015 04:05 ET (09:05 GMT)

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