Analysis of a genuine Boeing 777 wing flap has reaffirmed experts' opinion that a missing Malaysian airliner most likely crashed north of an abandoned search area in the Indian Ocean, officials said on Friday.

The US$160 million search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 ended in January after a deep-sea sonar scan of 120,000 square kilometers of ocean floor southwest of Australia failed to find any trace of the flight that vanished with 239 people aboard on March 8, 2014. But research has continued in an effort to refine a possible new search.

Australian government oceanographers had obtained a wing flap of the same model as the original and studied how that part drifted in the ocean, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement. Previous drift modeling used inexact replicas.