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Searchers at the Dutch company leading the underwaterhunt for Malaysia Airlines jetMH370say they believe the plane may have glided down rather than dived in the final moments, meaning they have been scouring the wrong patch of ocean for two years.
FlightMH370disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Searchers led by engineering group Fugro have been combing an area roughly the size of Greece for two years.
That search, over 120,000 square kilometres of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia,is expected to end in three months and could be called off after that following a meeting of key countries Malaysia, China and Australia on Friday.So far, nothing has been found.
The British Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force have made contributions to the Australian-led search for the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.Photo:EPA
The oceanographer who led American adventurer Blaine Gibson to Madagascar where he found a potential debris field from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet said on Thursday that drift modelling suggested that Flight 370 could have crashed slightly north of the current search area.
The comments come after Gibson on Tuesday handed Malaysian authorities in Kuala Lumpur three pieces of debris and personal belongings found on Madagascar beaches in June, which he suspects came from the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Another six pieces of potential debris found by Gibson are waiting with Madagascar authorities for Malaysia to collect.
Western Australian University oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi said he had told Gibson that Flight 370 debris was likely to concentrate on Madagascar. Pattiaratchi’s earlier advice had led Gibson to Mozambique where he found debris in February that experts later determined came from Flight 370.
Australian and Malaysian officials examine aircraft debris at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau headquarters in Canberra, Australia, July 20, 2016 after it was found on Pemba Island, located near Tanzania, in late June. Photo: Reuters
“He rang me from the Maldives and said: where should I go? Should I go to Rodrigues, Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa?” Pattiaratchi said on Thursday. “I said: ‘Your best bet is the northeast part of Madagascar’, which is where he went.”
Pattiaratchi said the same modelling led his team of oceanographers to suspect that the airliner could have gone down just north of the search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
Pattiaratchi’s modelling was based on how long the first piece of confirmed Flight 370 wreckage took to reach La Reunion Island off the African coast a year ago.
Another four pieces found along shores on the southwest of the Indian Ocean have since been determined as almost certainly from Flight 370.
Gibson gives credit to Pattiaratchi and Australian government oceanographer David Griffin for his finds, although only one has been confirmed as part of Flight 370. Griffin’s advice led Gibson to a second Madagascar island where he found the potential debris that he brought to Malaysia.
Gibson said he had been told by Malaysian officials that costs were the reason that a Malaysian investigator had twice cancelled plans to fly to Madagascar to retrieve debris he had found.
“They tell me it’s a budgetary situation. If you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to search under water and finding nothing, and it’s only a plane ticket to pick up six pieces and some personal effects, you ought to just do it,” he said.
“The best guess that we think is that it’s probably around the Broken Ridge region, which is slightly to the north of the area that they’re looking at,” Pattiaratchi said.
But he said he could not say that the aircraft had not crashed in the 120,000 sq km of seabed currently being searched southwest of Australia.
Officials from Malaysia, China and Australia will meet in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to discuss the future of the search, with fewer than 10,000 sq km remaining to be scanned by ships towing sonar equipment. The underwater search has not yielded a single clue.
MH370:All you need to know
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014 at 00:41 local time
227 passengers and 12 crew were on board
It should have landed at 6.30am in Beijing
But the final contact with air control was at 01:19 when a co-pilot radioed: "Alright, good night"
Soon after, the plane made a sharp left turn off course, from north-east to almost due west
At 01:38, Vietnamese air traffic control become concerned that the pilot hadn't made a scheduled check-in
At 02:15, MH370’s position was picked up for the final time by Malaysian military radar heading north-west, across the Andaman Sea
At 05:30, a search and rescue operation was launched
Despite a huge, months-long search of the southern Indian Ocean led by Australia, no trace of the MH370 was found in the sea.
(APD)
