Go north, MH370 guru Neil Gordon tells searchers

The scientist who led a review to refine the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 says the hunt should move north.

The senior defence scientist who led a major review to refine the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has said with the current target area ­almost covered, the hunt should move north.

The conclusion of Defence Science Technology Group mathematician Neil Gordon was given in his first media interview on MH370, with US magazine Popular Mechanics.

It comes amid growing doubts about the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s decision on where to search, which relies on an ­assumption the aircraft was un­piloted and went into a “death dive” when it ran out of fuel. The increasingly canvassed alternative scenario is that Captain ­Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end and outside the search area.

The hunt led by the ATSB is approaching the end of sonar ­imaging of the seabed in the desig­nated 120,000sq km target zone in the southern Indian Ocean. MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, after reversing course back over Malaysia to the Andaman Sea.

In its latest issue, Popular Mechanics reports that Dr Gordon, who heads the Data and ­Information Fusion unit at the DSTG, has now said: “If you look at the probability distribution, it would say, ‘Go up north’.”

Dr Gordon headed the DSTG team commissioned to conduct a detailed review of seven Inmarsat satellite handshake “pings” from MH370 and other data to determine the most likely area where the Boeing 777 came down. Some scientists, prior to Dr Gordon’s intervention, suggested the airliner could be on the arc indicated by the last satellite “ping”, but farther northeast along it.

A recent European study that analysed bits of debris from MH370 found on the coast of ­Africa and on islands concluded that the patterns of currents suggested a more northerly resting place. The independent group of scientists and engineers who have examined available data have come to a similar conclusion from a different analysis. They say the point at which MH370 made its last turn over the Andaman Sea is unknown and could have been farther north, in which case it would have run out of fuel farther north along what is known as the “seventh arc” of satellite data.

Dr Gordon told Popular Mechanics the analysis of the data was always a balance of probabilities. “If you’d said before they started searching this 120,000sq km, ‘What’s the probability you think you’ll find it in there?’, I’d have said ‘mid-70s,’ because that’s the probability content of that zone.”

Dr Gordon did not return calls or emails from The Australian.

A Defence spokesman said Dr Gordon ­“advises that from the statistical analysis any future search should be directed to the area (with) the most probability of finding the aircraft.

“This would mean continuing the search northeast along the final arc of Inmarsat data.”

Judith Zielke, chief co-ordin­ator of the federal government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre guiding the search strategy, has insisted satellite data can show relative changes and MH370 was in a rapid, increasing descent at the end of flight.