Aviation experts believe research may have uncovered the final resting place of flight MH370, which disappeared in 2014.
The Malaysia Airlines airplane disappeared roughly 38 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur airport, headed for Beijing, on March 8, 2014.
The plane was never found, and the fate of its 237 passengers remain unknown.
However, new research uncovered by Richard Godfrey, Dr Hannes Coetzee, and Professor Simon Maskell may uncover some of the many missing pieces.
A 299-page report released on Wednesday suggests the missing wreckage may be located roughly 1560km west of Perth, Australia. The theory comes from “ground-breaking” amateur radio technology known as a weak signal propagation reporter, or WSPR.
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“This technology has been developed over the past three years and the results represent credible new evidence,” the researchers said.
“It aligns with analyses by Boeing (...) and drift analyses by University of Western Australia of debris recovered around the Indian Ocean.”
The researchers explained when an aircraft, like MH370, flies through an amateur radio signal, or WSPR link, the signals are disturbed. These records are stored in a global database.
The researchers used 125 of these disturbances to track the aircraft's path for more than six hours following the planes last radio contacts at about 6pm. Combined with data from Boeing and Inmarsat satellites, and using drift analysis data, the same crash site was located.
“Together with [the data], a comprehensive picture of the final hours of flight MH370 can be collated,” the researchers said.
“Flight MH370 was diverted into the Indian Ocean where it crashed of fuel exhaustion… at some point after the last signal after midnight.”
Geoffrey Thomas, Airline Ratings Editor spoke to Australian radio station 6PR, explaining that the research used technology and “complex mathematics”.
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“Amateur radio operators, when they turn their sets on, their signals go around the world; those signals have been stored since 2009, and it’s possible to track an airplane by the disturbance it makes when it goes through those radio waves,” Thomas said.
“They've been able to go back in time to 2014, March 8, from the last known position of MH370, and through some very, very complex mathematics and science they are able to recreate the flight path of the aircraft and come to a position which is 1500 kilometres west of Perth in an area which has been partially searched before but about half of it has not.”
Thomas said that based on previous aircraft failures, should MH370 be found, the airplane will remain in its place.
“I believe, from past cases, they'll leave it where it is. It would be very difficult to get it off the ocean.”
MH370 departed Malaysia just before 5pm with 227 passengers and 12 crew onboard. Two of the passengers were from New Zealand.
At roughly 5:20pm, Captain Zahrie Shah responded to a Malaysian air traffic controller, saying: “...contact Ho Chi Minh (...) good night.” The plane then went dark, diverted from the intended flight path and is believed to have run out of fuel 7.5 hours later, crashing into the ocean.
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