Flight MH 370 Was On Autopilot Until It Spiraled And Crashed, Investigators Say

The still missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was placed on autopilot before it most likely spiraled out of control and crashed into the Indian Ocean, investigators said Thursday.

The latest report as to what happened to Flight MH 370, which went missing March 8, came the same day Australian officials announced a new search zone for the Boeing 777, ABC News reported.

Investigators believe the airplane was placed on autopilot as it flew over a wide stretch of the Indian Ocean, a conclusion arrived at after analyzing data sent back and forth between the aircraft and a satellite.

The 239 passenger and crew flight continued flying for a little over seven hours until it ran out of gas, spiraled and crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

"Certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean, we are confident that the aircraft was operating on autopilot until it ran out of fuel," Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told ABC News.

The spiraling could have continued for nearly four minutes.

Investigators do not know why the Beijing-bound flight was placed on autopilot after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. But there is good reason to assume the plane was manually switched on autopilot instead of it automatically being activated by default, Dolan told the station.

Officials are expanding the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean to 23,000 square miles, an area located over 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia, according to the Los Angeles Times. The new area is 70 times larger and much farther south than the zone previously searched for the last few months.

The reason for the expansion is due in part to uncertainty as to where the Boeing 777 began spiraling down. Once the plane ran out of fuel, the engines would not have automatically stopped, which most likely caused the spiraling.

But Australian investigators are not sure why the plane went missing to begin with. That is still being investigated by the Malaysian government, ABC News reported.