Official underwater search suspended

On 17 January 2017 the three governments announced the suspension of the official underwater search. About 120,000 km² had been searched at high resolution. The ATSB’s later operational-search report (October 2017) documents the refinements of the 7th-arc analysis, the role of debris drift, and the reasons the defined priority zone was considered exhausted. Suspension is not a finding that the aircraft is not in the southern Indian Ocean; it is a finding that it was not in the box they had just finished.