The patch of deep ocean southwest of Australia that Captain Simon Hardy has determined is the most likely resting place of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be searched through December, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the search on Malaysia's behalf, said in a statement.

But Australian authorities are not being guided by the experienced Boeing 777 pilot's analysis. Martin Dolan, the bureau's chief commissioner, said the search was moving farther south within a 120,000-square-kilometer (46,000-square-mile) priority area because the southern hemisphere spring had made the extreme conditions in the southern ocean calmer.

“We're aware that we're in the area that Capt. Hardy specifies, but we're in that area because it was next in our search sequence, and we've been moving progressively south because the weather is improving,” Dolan said.

Hardy's theory of where Flight 370 went after it inexplicably flew far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, has been widely published in recent months. He used mathematical analysis and a flight simulator to plot the course he believed the airliner took when it vanished in one of aviation's most baffling mysteries.

“I am fairly confident that the wreckage will be found within the next four to eight weeks,” Hardy told The Australian newspaper.

Experts directing the search have discussed Hardy's theory with him. Hardy could not be immediately contacted for comment on Monday.

“There are many theories from members of the public and various independent experts and all are considered,” the bureau said in its statement, which described Hardy's analysis as credible.

But searchers do not accept a key aspect of Hardy's conclusion: that whoever was flying the plane made a controlled landing at sea, which allowed it to sink largely intact.

The only confirmed wreckage of Flight 370 to be recovered was a wing flap found on a remote Indian Ocean island in July.

- AFP