Two years after: MH370 “likely” to be found by this July
The Australia-based Joint Agency Coordination Center tasked with combing the seafloor in the southern Indian Ocean in search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has four months to go until the entire search area is exhausted – and believes that the remains of the plane could be found by this July, if not earlier.
Martin Dolan, head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told The Guardian that MH370 is “very likely” to be found until then. The statement came ahead of the two-year anniversary when the plane mysteriously vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, and after debris suspected to be from the aircraft was found on the shores of Mozambique in late February.
Since March 2014, more than 85,000 square kilometers of the seafloor have been searched and about $135 million have been spent by Australia, Malaysia and China to find the aircraft which carried 227 passengers and 12 crew on board – but to no avail.
Some 30,000 square kilometers remain to be searched, and Dolan suggests that the plane is indeed somewhere in this area and should have been found when the operation concludes. But in case the plane has still not been located by then, “alternative scenarios might apply,” says Dolan,
One alternative is to widen the search area three-fold, but this is a scenario towards which the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments have been fairly explicit that the cost of searching such a vast tranche of ocean floor would be prohibitive.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak at an anniversary speech said he remained “hopeful that MH370 will be found”, but once the search zone is exhausted the three governments would meet to “determine the way forward.”
He added that the search had taken place in “some of the world’s most inhospitable terrains” at depths of up to 6,000 meters across underwater mountain ranges and in the world’s fastest currents.
The investigation relies on the hypothesis that MH370 crashed as a ghost flight, with the pilots incapacitated or deceased. The assumption is its flight path ended in the southern Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel.
Other theories on the disappearance include terrorism, hijacking, a fire, mass murder or a gradual decompression. Until the plane wreckage is located, nothing can be excluded.
The Australia-based Joint Agency Coordination Center tasked with combing the seafloor in the southern Indian Ocean in search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has four months to go until the entire search area is exhausted - and believes that the remains of the plane could be found by this July, if not earlier. Martin Dolan, head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told The Guardian that MH370 is “very likely” to be found until then. The statement came ahead of the two-year anniversary when the plane mysteriously vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8,...
The Australia-based Joint Agency Coordination Center tasked with combing the seafloor in the southern Indian Ocean in search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has four months to go until the entire search area is exhausted – and believes that the remains of the plane could be found by this July, if not earlier.
Martin Dolan, head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told The Guardian that MH370 is “very likely” to be found until then. The statement came ahead of the two-year anniversary when the plane mysteriously vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, and after debris suspected to be from the aircraft was found on the shores of Mozambique in late February.
Since March 2014, more than 85,000 square kilometers of the seafloor have been searched and about $135 million have been spent by Australia, Malaysia and China to find the aircraft which carried 227 passengers and 12 crew on board – but to no avail.
Some 30,000 square kilometers remain to be searched, and Dolan suggests that the plane is indeed somewhere in this area and should have been found when the operation concludes. But in case the plane has still not been located by then, “alternative scenarios might apply,” says Dolan,
One alternative is to widen the search area three-fold, but this is a scenario towards which the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments have been fairly explicit that the cost of searching such a vast tranche of ocean floor would be prohibitive.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak at an anniversary speech said he remained “hopeful that MH370 will be found”, but once the search zone is exhausted the three governments would meet to “determine the way forward.”
He added that the search had taken place in “some of the world’s most inhospitable terrains” at depths of up to 6,000 meters across underwater mountain ranges and in the world’s fastest currents.
The investigation relies on the hypothesis that MH370 crashed as a ghost flight, with the pilots incapacitated or deceased. The assumption is its flight path ended in the southern Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel.
Other theories on the disappearance include terrorism, hijacking, a fire, mass murder or a gradual decompression. Until the plane wreckage is located, nothing can be excluded.
