Australian and Malaysian authorities have announced that a deep sea search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 will resume next month.

The plane vanished on March 8th, while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.

Australian officials have previously said they are confident the missing plane was flying on autopilot when it disappeared.

The search area in the hunt for the missing jet has shifted several times at suspected crash sites in a remote stretch of Indian Ocean, where a remote underwater drone had been scouring 330 square miles of seabed.

In June, the relatives of missing passengers announced they were seeking to raise some €3.6m to offer as a reward to any "whistleblower" who can offer information leading to the discovery of the lost plane.

Many of the families believe there has been a cover-up and are hoping the money will tempt someone to come forward, such as an insider from the world of commercial aviation or the military.

The most recent search area for MH370 | Image: Australian Maritime Safety Authority

The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but an extensive search has turned up no sign of wreckage so far.

The hunt suffered a major setback after it emerged acoustic pings thought to have come from the plane's two flight recorders were not from the aircraft after all, leaving search teams scouring the wrong area.

It is thought the sounds came from a search boat or the ping detector itself, ruling out the area originally thought to be where the plane was located.

The underwater phase of the search could take up to a year, covering 60,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss explains.