KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 — Investigators trying to locate the missing flight MH370 needed to refine the data provided by satellite company Inmarsat before they were able to conclusively decide on the new search and rescue areas, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said today, explaining the week-long delay.

The acting transport minister said both Malaysian and American teams agreed that further refinement was needed before they could act on the initial findings mined by experts in the US from data provided by the British satellite firm last Thursday.

“The initial results were received on March 13, but both teams agreed that it needed further refinement and it was sent back to the US.

“On March 14 at 2.30pm, the refined data was received and presented to the team,” he said in a live telecast of the daily press conference from a Sepang hotel.

It was reported earlier today that Inmarsat was “fairly certain” that the massive search and rescue operation for the Malaysia Airlines-owned Boeing 777-200 should have shifted to the Indian Ocean, two days after it disappeared on March 8.

The British satellite company told ABC News that it first shared its data with a partner company on March 11, which in turn forwarded the data to Malaysia Airlines on March 12.

Malaysia, however, only called off the search in the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca on March 15, redirecting search and rescue efforts over two corridors — a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, and a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

When asked about the delay in redeployment, Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman stressed that the investigating teams were unable to come to a conclusive decision based on the initial findings on the data provided by Inmarsat.

“Both the Malaysian and US teams agreed that further refinement was needed, and the end details was that we came up with the two corridors.

“The Inmarsat data was also sent to the aircraft accident board in the UK and they did their own analysis on it. They came to Malaysia on Friday, March 14... we compared the findings of the Malaysian and US teams with the UK team and the end results matched,” Azharuddin said.

Hishammuddin noted that the sort of satellite data provided by Inmarsat is not what is typically used in search and rescue operations.

“It is only because there is so little information to go on in this difficult and unprecedented situation that this data was used,” he said.