The wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is most likely located to the north of a main search zone, according to Australian scientists.
MH370 disappeared while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board in 2014.
Australia, Malaysia and China called off their hunt for the aircraft in January.
Analysing drift modelling of a real Boeing 777 wing part for the first time, scientists backed a December report about the likely location of MH370, the BBC reported.
The location is an area of approximately 9,700 sq miles lying north of the earlier search zone in the southern Indian Ocean.
“Testing an actual flaperon [wing part] has added an extra level of assurance to the findings from our earlier drift modelling work,” said Dr David Griffin, from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Earlier modelling had used replicas of a flaperon recovered from Reunion Island, the report said.
“We’ve found that an actual flaperon goes about 20 degrees to the left, and faster than the replicas, as we thought it might,” Dr Griffin said.
“The arrival of MH370’s flaperon at La Reunion in July 2015 now makes perfect sense.”