A private Australian company that believes it may have found the wreckage of MH370 has slammed official investigators for not taking its claims seriously.
Adelaide-based GeoResonance, a marine exploration company, says it has detected possible aircraft wreckage in the Bay of Bengal, 5000km from the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
"We’re a large group of scientists, and we were being ignored, and we thought we had a moral obligation to get our findings to the authorities," the company’s director, David Pope, told CNN.
GeoResonance’s technology works by analysing electromagnetic fields captured by airborne multispectral images.
The technology was created to search for nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry under the ocean or beneath the earth in bunkers, Mr Pope said.
GeoResonance began its search four days after the plane went missing and sent officials initial findings on March 31, before following up with a full report on April 15.
Flying Officer Benjamin Hepworth searches from a Royal Australian Airforce AP-3C Orion for possible MH370 debris. (Getty)
Mr Pope said he did not want to go public with the information at first but his information was disregarded.
"The company is not declaring this is MH370, however it should be investigated," GeoResonance said in a statement.
The company reportedly has accredited representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch and China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, among other agencies.
But the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is coordinating the multinational search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, has dismissed GeoResonance’s claims.
"The Australian-led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft’s location," the JACC said in a statement.
"The location specified by the GeoResonance report is not within the search arc derived from this data. The joint international team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc."
April 16, 2014: The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, has given a speech at the Sydney Opera House, talking about their exciting trip ahead, current affairs and leading the search for missing flight MH370.
Malaysian acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein offered a less dismissive response when asked about the GeoResonance report at a press conference yesterday, saying that Malaysia is "working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information."
"Need more corroboration n verification b4 we deploy assets," he said later on his Twitter account.
Weeks of air and sea searching, including a deep-sea sonar scan by an unmanned mini-submarine, have so far found no signs of the MH370 wreckage.
Australia on Monday announced an expanded search involving different technology across an area of about 56,000 square kilometres.
Sources: CNN, Seven News.