CSIRO study points to new likely resting place of Flight MH370

A panel has identified a new 25,000 sq km area of the Indian Ocean as the likely resting place of Flight MH370.

A panel of Australian and international experts has identified a new 25,000sq km area of the southern Indian Ocean as the likely resting place of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 but a search will depend on Malaysia.

The experts’ report released yesterday states that if the hunt for the Boeing 777 is to continue, it should turn further north. The search for the aircraft is now winding down without any success.

Australia, Malaysia and China have funded a two-year underwater search of 120,000sq km led by the Dutch Fugro survey group but it will end in the coming weeks.

The release of the expert report will heighten domestic and international debate on whether a further search should be launched, and whether the present effort has been looking in the right place.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Radar and satellite tracking data indicate the aircraft flew back over Malaysia and then on to the southern Indian Ocean.

Most air crash investigators and professional pilots believe MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft, turned off the radar transponder and ceased radio communications before flying it to a remote part of the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has worked on a different end-of-flight scenario known as the “ghost flight” or “death dive” theory, which holds that the pilots were incapacitated at the end consistent with decompression leading to unconsciousness.

The ATSB insists its approach is based on impartial scientific analysis, but critics say it is motivated by not wanting to embarrass Malaysia by effectively saying its national, Zaharie, was a rogue pilot and mass murderer.

The Malaysian government is thought not to want to extend the search and has been moving at home to shut down discussion.

“The Malaysian government must have their champagne on ice waiting for the last Fugro ship to complete its final sweep,” veteran commercial pilot and aviation commentator Byron Bailey said yesterday.

Top figures in the ATSB are known to want to continue the search, which has so far cost about $200 million, but there is no budget for it, and the position of the three governments is that it will not be resumed without specific new ­information on the aircraft’s ­location.

The ATSB tacitly ­acknow­ledged yesterday that ­unless ­Malaysia agrees to search the area to the north, it will not happen.

“Given the international protocols for aircraft recovery scenarios such as this, Malaysia will continue to take the central role in the determination of any future course of action in the search for MH370,” the ATSB said.

The hunt has focused on a band of ocean indicated by hourly automatic electronic satellite “handshakes” with the aircraft, the seventh of which is a track known as the “seventh arc”.

The CSIRO conducted a new “drift modelling” analysis of where debris was discovered on and off the coast of Africa, matched against known ocean currents and winds, to see if it might indicate where the aircraft went down.

The ATSB said the results of the CSIRO study “present strong evidence that the aircraft is most likely to be located to the north of the current indicative underwater search area.”