Air crash investigators searching for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 hope to further narrow down the planned search area to find the doomed Boeing 777 within the next year.

The aircraft vanished on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board after it departed Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia to Beijing in China.

Over the past six months, international experts searched for the aircraft using a range of data in a bid to narrow down the crash site.

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The Australian government has released an updated map showing the new, smaller search area for MH370

Experts have spent the past six months remapping large areas of the sea floor to facilitate the search

Extensive aerial searches failed to spot any wreckage from the airliner, but experts have studied radar and satellite data in a bid to close in on the crash site.

Martin Dolan of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is leading the search and feels confident that he will be able to announce a smaller search area shortly based on satellite data and the use of flight simulators.

He said new seabed surveys have also produced some interesting findings including hard objects that seem inconsistent with their surroundings, although there is no guarantee that this is the aircraft.

He told The Times: ' There is nothing that has screamed out and said "I look like an aircraft".

'It's still a hell of an area. The area is horribly, horribly complicated.'

The Boeing 777 jet departed Kuala Lumpar and vanished without a trace after disappearing from radar, file pic

Australian deputy PM Warren Truss, right, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Malaysian transport minister Dato' Seri Liow Tiong Lai in Canberra last night to agree to fund the renewed search

Mr Dolan earlier wrote on his blog that the new search will concentrate on a 60,000 square kilometre area of the southern Indian Ocean.

'The complexities surrounding the search cannot be understated. It involves vast areas of the Indian Ocean with only limited known data and aircraft flight information.

'While it is impossible to determine with certainty where the aircraft may have entered the water, all the available data indicates a highly probable search area close to a long but narrow arc of the southern Indian Ocean.

'The search will be a major undertaking. The complexities and challenges involved are immense, but not impossible.

'The best minds from around the world have been reviewing, refining and localising the most likely area where the aircraft entered the water, which is why we remain confident of finding the aircraft.'