The director of a seabed hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has disagreed with a new book's conclusion that the pilot likely flew the plane beyond the search area to land and sink it in unexplored depths of the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau believes Flight 370 ran out of fuel and crashed after flying off course en route from Malaysia to Beijing in 2014. All 239 people on board were likely long dead inside a depressurized cabin and cockpit.

A Senate committee questioned search director Peter Foley Tuesday on theories in Canadian air crash investigator Larry Vance's new book, MH370: Mystery Solved.

The book argues two wing flaps found on islands off Africa point to the pilot performing a controlled ditching outside the area scoured by sonar.