Searchers for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will not revisit areas already combed, saying they remain confident the jetliner will be found in coming months.
Two years after the passenger jet disappeared with 239 people on board, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan says he still believes the search zone off Western Australia is the right place to look.
The governments of Malaysia, Australia and China maintain they won't further expand the search beyond the 120,000sq km Indian Ocean zone without credible new information, much to the outrage of families of victims.
Voice370, a support group for MH370 next-of-kin, says the claims of funds drying up is an unacceptable reason to not keep going if the current effort proves fruitless.
Mr Dolan says he remains confident the plane will be found in the 30,000sq km left to comb.
But if it is not, the search will not be redone.
"We've put in very good and well-layered systems of quality assurance for our sonar data and so we're confident that when we have covered an area without finding the debris field associated with the aircraft, then it's not there," he told AAP on Thursday.
"We've got some of the world's best sonar experts independently looking over the work that is being done, including the ones that were closely associated with the finding of France 447.
"So we wouldn't be seeing any need to recover areas we've already looked at.
"Things like the discovery of the two shipwrecks on the sea floor shows that we've got the capability.
"If the aircraft is there, we will find it."
The discovery of a flaperon from MH370 on a La Reunion beach in July showed searchers were looking in the right place, he said, and would be reinforced if two further pieces of possible wreckage discovered on the same island and on a sandbar in Mozambique earlier this month were proved to be from the plane.
It made sense the two pieces could have taken so long to make it across the sea, he said.
"The rate of drift and to some extent the direction of drift is dependent on leeway - how much a piece of debris is sticking up above the water," Mr Dolan said.
About one-third of the wing piece was protruding from the sea, he said, so the effect of wind and waves would have been greater than on the second and third finds, which were flat.
The pieces found on La Reunion are in the hands of French authorities, while the object discovered in Mozambique will be brought to Canberra, where the best facilities and expertise are located, right down to geoscientists who can analyse marine life on the item, Mr Dolan said.
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