Day 83 — End of the Bluefin-21 mission

The missing Malaysia Airlines plane is not in the Indian Ocean search zone where acoustic "pings" were detected, search co-ordinators have confirmed.

The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort, having scanned 850 square kilometres of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777-200. The Bluefin-21 was not able to look at one area in the northernmost ping area because of the depth of the water there.

Authorities now almost universally believe the pings did not come from the onboard data or cockpit voice recorders but instead came from some other man-made source unrelated to the jetliner that disappeared on March 8.

Australia said this week it will negotiate with private companies to conduct the next phase, which will resume in two months, if not later. That phase, which aims to scour about 60,000 square kilometers, probably won't start for at least two months.

This seafloor topography map illustrates jagged plateaus, ridges and other underwater features of a large area underneath the Indian Ocean where search efforts have focused since contact with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was lost on March 8.

The new illustration of a 2,000 kilometer by 1,400 kilometer area where the plane might be shows locations on the seafloor corresponding to where acoustic signals from the airplane’s black boxes were reportedly detected at the surface by two vessels in the area. It also shows the two plateaus near where these “pings” were heard.

It points out the deepest point in the area: 7,883 meters (about five miles) underneath the sea in the Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone.

Seafloor topography in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 search area. Dashed lines approximate the search zone for sonar pings emitted by the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder popularly called black boxes. The first sonar contact (black circle) was reportedly made by a Chinese vessel on the east flank of Batavia Plateau (B), where the shallowest point in the area (S) is at an estimated depth of 1637 meters. The next reported sonar contact (red circle) was made by an Australian vessel on the north flank of Zenith Plateau (Z). The deepest point in the area (D) lies in the Wallaby- Zenith Fracture Zone at an estimated depth of 7883 meters. The Wallaby Plateau (W) lies to the east of the Zenith Plateau. The shallowest point in the entire area shown here is on Broken Ridge (BR). Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) site 256 is marked by a gray dot. The inset in the top left shows the area’s location to the west of Australia.