Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: New Map Shows Where Plane Likely Hit Water, Evidence Mounts That Search Is Too Far South
New evidence from a computer study shows that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 apparently crashed into the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles north of where an official, Australia-led search team has been scouring the remote region of the seabed since September of 2014, according to a report from the German scientific team at the GEOMAR Hemlholtz Center For Oceanic Research.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 — a Boeing 777-200 jumbo jet with 239 people on board — disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on the night of March 8, 2014. With all communications cut off, the only way searchers were able to have any idea where the plane went was from a series of “ping” signals between the plane and a satellite.
Using the “ping” evidence, investigators concluded that the Malaysia Airlines plane, for some unknown reason, flew seven hours off course and crashed into a remote region of the southern Indian Ocean the searchers dubbed “The Seventh Arc.”
The first piece of debris from the plane did not turn up until July of 2015, on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean, off the eastern coast of Africa. Since then, four more pieces of debris have been found, all in the same region off the southeast coast of Africa.
The two latest debris pieces discovered were finally confirmed on Thursday to have come from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, as detailed in the below video news report from CBS News Online.
The German scientists, led by Dr. Jonathan Durgadoo, first conducted their study in September of 2015, using computer modeling of oceanic drift patterns to trace the possible routes taken by the Reunion Island debris — a chunk of wing known as a “flaperon” — that would have allowed it to end up on the French-owned island from a crash site somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
To read earlier Inquisitr coverage of the drift pattern revelations see the “Previous Coverage” links in the box below on this page.
Durgadoo and his team on Wednesday released a revised version of their study, in which they updated their simulated drift patterns to show that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 likely hit the water somewhat south of where their earlier study indicated — but still hundreds of miles north of where the official searchers believe Flight MH370 went down.
“While it is shifted a bit southward from the initial study done last September, our basic result that most particles originate from a region north of the current search area remains unchanged,” Durgadoo said in a statement issued this week by GEOMAR.
The latest debris pieces turned up on coastlines in Mozambique and South Africa, also in southeastern Africa, and on the island of Mauritias, off the Mozambique coastline. Those debris finds are consistent with the GEOMAR conclusions regarding the flaperon found on Reunion Island, the scientists say.
Debris found in March “almost certainly” from missing #MH370 jet, says ATSB https://t.co/Vt2L7Y0JhE pic.twitter.com/aLlIhwM4PU
— CNN (@CNN) May 12, 2016
“The ocean currents through the Mozambique Channel and along the South African coast are extensions of the route that passes by La Réunion,” said Arne Biastoch, another scientist who worked on the drift modeling computer study.
The full GEOMAR report can be read by clicking on this link.
According to independent researcher Jeff Wise, a journalist and aviation expert who has written frequently on the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mystery, the northerly location of the crash site, if indeed the GEOMAR study is accurate, almost certainly means that either the pilot or some unknown person was at the controls of the Boeing 777 as it curved northward and finally hit the water.
“If the plane was under conscious control until the bitter end, then we cannot assume that, as in the unpiloted scenario, it spiraled into the sea once its fuel ran out,” Wise wrote on his blog this week. “Instead, the conscious pilot might have chose to hold it into a glide far beyond the seventh arc. We have no reasonable expectation, therefore, that a narrow search along the seventh arc would yield the wreckage.”
PREVIOUS MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370 COVERAGE FROM THE INQUISITR
- Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: More Doubts About Wing Debris, Location Of Plane, As Australia Prepares To Quit Search
- New Computer Analysis Deepens Mystery Of Where Malaysia Airlines Plane Ended, How It Got There
- Plane Debris ‘Planted’ Deliberately, Expert Says — But Who Did It And Why?
- DiDid This Russian Spy Mastermind Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 High-Tech Hijack?
- Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Vladimir Putin Behind Plane’s Disappearance, Shootdown Of MH17, Also?
- New Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Mystery: Debris Fragments In Ocean Only ‘A Couple Weeks’
- Flight 370: Two Pieces Of Debris Found In Indian Ocean ‘Almost Certainly’ From Doomed Flight
- Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Inside Doomed Plane — Spot Of New Debris ID’ed, But Raises More Questions
Another piece of debris appearing to be a “black box” flight recorder was discovered on a beach in Somalia last week, and was initially suspected of being the long-sought black box from Malaysia Airlines Flight. But experts who looked at the flight recorder said that it dated from the 1960s or 1970s, and would not have been the model used on the missing Flight MH370.
[Featured Photo By Joshua Paul/Associated Press]
