It's been almost half a year since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and although nothing has turned up so far, a new development might help narrow the search.
Authorities announced Thursday that thanks to a failed satellite phone call Malaysian officials tried to make to the plane after it lost contact, they learned the course of the plane might have shifted earlier than thought. (Video via CCTV)
As this map from the Joint Agency Coordination Centre shows, the search area is broken down into three tiers: the gray showing the wide search area; the blue, medium; and the orange marking the priority area, with the yellow highlights showing everywhere data has been collected.
It's worth noting even though 87,000 square kilometers have already been searched, that's a fraction of the wide search area, which measures 1.1 million square kilometers.
Although the officials announced there would be refinements made to the search area given the new findings, the search will stay in the same part of the Indian Ocean. (Video via CBS)
In the months since the flight's disappearance, there have been a number of other major news stories that overshadowed the search, including the downing of another Malaysia Airlines flight in Ukraine. It's been so long since it's been in the news that even CNN had to admit:
"It's been awhile since we've given you an update on the search for MH370, but here it is ... "
In that time, there have been a handful of developments, such as an investigation into the flight's captain.
FOX NEWS: "The captain put in simulated flight plans to fly far out into the Indian Ocean and that he practiced landing on short runways on small islands."
And a big shift in the search area after it came to light that the plane was probably on autopilot.
Few questions have been answered so far, and the big ones — what caused the plane to disappear and what exactly happened to it after — remain mysteries.
The lack of progress has contributed to the story being overshadowed by other major stories in the news, but the families of the victims have campaigned to keep international attention on the disappearance.
As The Guardian reports, some of the victims' families even offered to help counsel those who lost loved ones when MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in July.
A deep-water search for the plane is set to launch in September. The flight was carrying 239 people when it disappeared.
This video includes images from Getty Images.
