The search for missing flight MH370 resumes off the coast of Western Australia this week, seven months after the plane disappeared en route to Beijing.

Investigators will spend the next 12 days scanning the ocean floor for wreckage using a search vessel equipped with specialised sonar, according to a statement by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

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The new search area is 1,800 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, and is the location where the aircraft last communicated with a ground station via satellite.

An earlier scan of 850 kilometres of the seafloor in April and May failed to find any debris.

MH370 vanished after leaving Kuala Lumpur on March 8, with all 239 people on board still unaccounted for.