Potential location of MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean Malaysian authorities are considering resuming the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 after Australian aviation safety investigators have quietly launched a search review of the plane, nearly eight years after the disappearance of 239 people on board. The move follows a report by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, who claimed to have used “breakthrough technology” to locate the crash site in the Indian Ocean, 1,993km west of Perth, The wreckage is currently about 4,000 meters below the surface of the sea. Ministry of Transport Malaysia…
Malaysian authorities are considering resuming the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 after Australian aviation safety investigators have quietly launched a search review of the plane, nearly eight years after the disappearance of 239 people on board.
The move follows a report by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, who claimed to have used “breakthrough technology” to locate the crash site in the Indian Ocean, 1,993km west of Perth, The wreckage is currently about 4,000 meters below the surface of the sea.
Malaysia’s Transport Ministry said in a statement on February 18 that it will consult after the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has completed its review of documents produced by Godfrey and “reliable evidence” on the matter.
One of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries
Flight MH370 became one of the world’s biggest aviation mysteries on March 8, 2014, when a Boeing 777-200 plane suddenly disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Malaysia, China and Australia launched a joint $200 million underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, but called it off in January 2017 after finding no trace of the plane. A second three-month search, led by US firm Ocean Infinity, also failed in May the following year.
The location Godfrey identified was not within the original search area defined by the ATSB in 2015, but it did fall within the 120,000-square-kilometer search area that was expanded in 2016. In a subsequent search, Ocean Infinity is believed to have missed the location by just 28 kilometers during the 2018 mission.
Combined data analysis provides new clues
Godfrey said he used a high-tech system called weak signal propagation, a computer protocol that analyzes radio waves, to track the plane’s eventual motion and correlate it with Boeing’s satellite data, oceanography and drift. The analysis, combined with the performance data, concluded that “all four align with a specific point in the Indian Ocean.”
Malaysia’s transport ministry noted that it remains “sympathetic to the families of the victims and believes that any new credible evidence that may be presented should be carefully considered and studied to determine the location of the aircraft.”
