KUALA LUMPUR, May 29 — Australia’s authorities declared today it is ending the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 plane in the southern Indian Ocean, coming to that conclusion after deepsea hunts using a drone submersible have not been able to detect any trace of aircraft debris in more than 850 square kilometres of the ocean floor in the area.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), headed by retired Australian air marshal Angus Houston, said the underwater sub Bluefin-21 had completed its last mission searching the remaining areas where the several “ pings” believed to have originated from the missing passenger plane had been detected in early April. 

“As a result, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle since it joined the search effort.

“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and in its professional judgement, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” the statement said.

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The JACC said it was recalling the Australian warship ADV Ocean Shield, which had been towing the US underwater pinger locator, from the hunt. 

The ship left the search area last night and is expected to dock at Australia’s Fleet Base West this Saturday.

The JACC statement however said it was not giving up the underwater hunt for the plan but moving on to the next phase, which will involve a review of all data and analyses covering up to 60,000 square kilometres along the arc in the southern Indian Ocean; carrying out a bathymetric survey to map the sea floor and hiring the specialist services needed for a comprehensive search of the defined area.

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Mapping the sea floor is expected to take three months, the statement said, but added that the Chinese survey ship Zhu Kezhen was already working on areas identified as most likely by the ATSB. 

Malaysian ship Bunga Mas 6 and Chinese ship Haixun 01 are also involved in the work by sending back the survey data to Fremantle weekly for further processing by Geoscience Australia. 

“It is anticipated that this component of the search will begin in August and take up to 12 months,” the statement said.

It also said other experts will continue to review and refine radar and satellite data and aircraft performance data to pinpoint where the plane “most likely entered the water”. 

It pledged to publicly disclose the findings of the review in due course.

Two spokesmen from the US Navy have issued conflicting statements on the ping signals at the centre of the search for MH370 in the last two days, with one saying the signals did not originate from the Malaysian aircraft while the second official later said the earlier observation was “speculative and premature”.

According to foreign media reports, Chris Johnson, a spokesman for the US Navy, said work to determine the accuracy of the information is still ongoing and will be released when available.

In a statement on Sydney Morning Herald, Johnson said the US Navy would “defer to the Australians, as the lead in the search effort, to make additional information known at the appropriate time”.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft went missing shortly after departing Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing on March 8 and remains missing despite an international search involving over two dozen countries.

The Beijing-bound plane was ferrying 239 people on board.

It was detailed analysis of satellite and radar data that led experts to believe that MH370 had gone down in the southern Indian Ocean, a theory that at first did not sit well with the families of those aboard the ill-fated jetliner as it showed a drastic diversion to the plane’s original flight path.