[PERTH] The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 entered its 44th day yesterday as Australian search officials said that a crucial series of sonar scans of the Indian Ocean floor could be completed within a week.

The air, surface and underwater search is now focused on footage taken by a US Navy deep sea drone, which has narrowed its target range to a tight 10-kilometre circle of sea floor.

The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has spent the past week scouring the remote and largely unmapped stretch of ocean floor some 2,000 km (north-west of the Australian city of Perth for signs of the plane, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.