MH370's location an 'almost inconceivable' mystery: Final report says

Canberra : Australian investigators on Tuesday released their final report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying the inability to bring closure for victims families was a "great tragedy" and "almost inconceivable" in the modern age.

It has now been three-and-a-half years since MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, reports the Guardian.

The report was released by the the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the agency that coordinated the largest and most expensive underwater search in history.

"It remains a great tragedy and we wish that we could have brought complete closure to the bereaved," ATSB chief commissioner, Greg Hood, said. 

"I hope, however, that they can take some solace in the fact that we did all we could do to find answers."

The report found the reasons for the loss of MH370 could not be established with any certainty until it was found.

"It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era with 10 million passengers boarding commercial aircraft every day, 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."

The operation to find MH370 was suspended in January after 1,046 days, the Guardian reported. The suspension followed an unsuccessful underwater search 2,800km off the coast of Western Australia, which used a deep-sea sonar search over 120,000 sq.km.

Following the underwater search, a re-analysis of satellite imagery had narrowed the plane's likely resting place to an area of less than 25,000 sq.km, the ATSB said.

The location of the Boeing 777 has become one of aviation's greatest mysteries, unable to be solved by a multinational effort involving ships and aircraft from countries including India, China, the US and Australia.

MH370 veered off course and continued to fly for seven hours but sent no automatic transmissions after the first 38 minutes of flight.  The plane's last known position was recorded at the northern tip of Sumatra.