MH370: Missing Malaysia plane may have turned south earlier than previously thought

(CNN) -- A failed satellite phone call suggests Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may have turned south earlier than previously thought, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Thursday.

The information hasn't changed the priority search area for the missing aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean, Truss said.

He explained that after Flight 370 dropped off radar on March 8, Malaysia Airlines ground staff tried to make contact with the plane using a satellite phone.

The attempt was unsuccessful, Truss said, but subsequent analysis of the failed call has given experts a better idea of the aircraft's position and where it was traveling.

MH370 vanished with 239 people on board during a flight that was supposed to go from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. Months of searching have so far turned up no debris from the plane.

Investigators have relied on information from radar and satellites to try to plot the Boeing 777's course, concluding that it went down in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, far off Australia's west coast.

After reviewing all the available data on Flight 370's last movements, experts are sticking to the same vast search zone announced in June, Truss said.

But some of the information they have suggests that areas a little to the south may be of "particular interest," he said, without giving details on why.