MH370 Disappearance: Australian authorities deeply regret not finding missing flight, say ongoing mystery is unacceptable

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370-MH370 disappeared from air traffic controllers' radar screens on March 8, 2014 over the South China Sea, less than an hour after takeoff while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China with 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations.

What followed was a massive underwater search in the remote southern Indian Ocean. More than three years later the plane went missing and in spite of the frantic search carried on by various agencies there is no clue as yet, making it one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Meanwhile, Australian authorities said they deeply regret not finding missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the ongoing mystery is “unacceptable,” in their final report on the unsuccessful search which was published on Tuesday.

“The reasons for the loss of MH370 cannot be established with certainty until the aircraft is found,” the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said in the report.

“It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era...for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board.”

There have been strong speculations that the aircraft was diverted thousands of miles off course over the southern Indian Ocean before it crashed off the coast of Western Australia.

No trace of the aircraft was found in a 120,000 square kilometre (46,000 square mile) zone based on satellite analysis of the jet's likely trajectory after it diverted from its flight path.

"The reasons for the loss of MH370 cannot be established with certainty until the aircraft is found," the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which led the search mission, said in its final report on Tuesday. 

But after a near three-year hunt, ATSB said in the 440-page report that the "understanding of where MH370 may be located is better now than it has ever been".

"The underwater search has eliminated most of the high probability areas yielded by reconstructing the aircraft's flight path and the debris drift studies conducted in the past 12 months have identified the most likely area with increasing precision," it said. 

Only three fragments of MH370 have been found, washed up on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon.