Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: New Report Details Final Moments Of Missing Plane, Could Pinpoint Location
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 likely ran out of fuel and spiraled into the ocean, a report concluded Wednesday, as it pointed search crews to a more narrow location for the plane’s resting point in the Indian Ocean.
The report, released by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB), used flight simulations to recreate the final moments of the aircraft after it vanished on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The report suggested that the plane entered “a descending spiraling low bank angle left turn” and hit the ocean “a relatively short distance after the last engine flameout.”
The report could point to the final resting place of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, suggesting that the jet is in a “relatively close proximity” to an arc where investigators began searching on Monday.
The results “indicate that the next, underwater, phase of the search should be prioritized further south within the wide search area,” the ATSB concluded.
This week, new search plans were released, detailing an extensive sweep of the ocean floor. The ATSB announced Thursday that it was “in the process of finalizing the plan for the underwater search, to be followed and referred to by all parties involved.”
Though the final resting place of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could soon be known, the cause of the crash remains a mystery. This week, PBS aired a special edition of NOVA that looked into the plane’s disappearance, concluding that a deliberate human act could have taken the jet of course.
“It was intentional. Some humans did this,” said former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia in the October 8 NOVA episode. “The dots don’t line up. It doesn’t make sense.”
The episode suggested that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could have been hijacked, as it was unlikely that the plane could remain in the air for several hours after an equipment malfunction or accident. Satellite data has shown that the flight was in the air for several hours after going missing from radar.
