MH370 searchers try tracking debris route
- Latest News
- Monday, 22 August 2016
Searchers hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH377 are trying to track the sea voyage of the first piece of wreckage found, to identify where the B777 jet crashed, killing all 239 on board.
The current two-year search of 120,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean has so far found nothing and a new search would require a new funding commitment, because Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July that the A$160 million search will be suspended once the current stretch of ocean southwest of Australia is exhausted - unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location of the aircraft.
Further analysis of the jet part - a flaperon - that was found on Reunion Island off the African coast in July 2015 could help identify a search area outside the current boundary.
Six replicas of the flaperon will be sent to Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s oceanography department in Tasmania, where scientists will attempt 'more accurate' drift modelling.
If more money is committed, then the flaperons will be fitted with satellite beacons and set adrift at different points in the southern Indian Ocean around March 8 next year — the third anniversary of the disaster.
The jet went completely off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China.
Since then, theories about the plane's last hours and minutes have centred on three most-likely scenarios. The first has the plane gliding down into the sea after running out of fuel and with no-one alive at the controls.
The second is that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked the plane and glided it beyond the current search area.
The third is that the plane ran out of fuel and fell into the sea.
Australian analysis of the flap in Canberra suggests it was not deployed when it hit the water. It had instead been retracted inside the wing. A pilot attempting a soft landing would have extended the wing flaps, experts say.
