A long way off course I would say, seeing as it was supposed to be flying north from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and the part has been found way down off Africa. The mystery of why it ended up where it did will probably never be solved until they find the flight recorders, if they find them. At least they may be able to establish how the plane crashed into the sea from the part, but what it was actually doing in that region will still be a mystery.
If this is off MH370 (and it seems to have been pretty much confimed it is) the one thing that has been confirmed is that they are still searching in the correct area of the Indian Ocean. It's just that the area is so huge that, as one official said, "It's not just a case of finding a needle in a haystack. We haven't even found the haystack yet".
