Malaysian, Chinese and Australian ministers will meet in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to discuss the future of the search.
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Paul Kennedy, Fugro Project Director, said that the three countries agreed in April 2015 that should the aircraft not be located within the search area, and in the absence of any new credible evidence, the search area would not be extended.
Nearly $180million (£136m) has been spent on an underwater search spanning 120,000 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean – the most expensive in aviation history.
MH370 was a scheduled global passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur worldwide Airport, Malaysia, to Beijing Capital worldwide Airport in China.
The Boeing 777 disappeared while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to China with 239 people on board.
The search of the area, believed to be the most likely place for the plane to have crashed, was originally due to been finished in June.
A network of families of passengers dubbed Voice370 has sent an open letter to the transport ministers of Malaysia, China and Australia, saying it was “truly distressing and most baffling” that the items went ignored by investigators for more than six weeks.
About 20 percent of the designated search area, or about 3,800 square miles, remains unexplored.
Adventurer Blaine Gibson has handed Malaysian authorities three pieces of debris and personal belongings he found on Madagascar beaches and which he suspects came from the Boeing 777 that vanished March 8, 2014. But families of victims are calling for the search to be shifted based on vague clues from debris already found if the seabed search turns up nothing.
Officials from China, Malaysia and Australia confirmed the search will reach a hiatus if an area of the southern Indian Ocean now under investigation reveals no further information.
As Reuters reports, there will now be calls for the search teams to hand over their data to other firms and academics, who may have better luck at modelling MH370s final hours.
No one is entirely sure whether either co-pilots were in control, or if the plane was hijacked. “I feel encouraged. Fearing the worst, we now have something to hang on to”, said K.S. Narenderan whose lost his wife Chandrika Sharma on the flight.
Many relatives have long questioned whether the right area is being searched and want a thorough reassessment of the data.
Fugro’s controlled glide hypothesis is also the first time officials have leant some support to contested theories that someone was in control during the flight’s final moments.
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He said the plane debris found so far “did not identify the exact location of the aircraft” but the location of the debris is consistent with the drift modeling pattern done by Australia, which indicated a general search area.
