MH370 mystery could be solved as ‘perfect hiding place’ found where the doomed plane crashed, expert claims
AN AUSSIE scientist believes he has found the exact spot where the doomed MH370 passenger plane crashed after it disappeared a decade ago.
The Malaysian Airlines flight, with 239 people on board, disappeared from radars as it flew into Vietnamese air space en route to Beijing.
The flight took an unexplained U-turn from its planned flight path.
Its disappearance sparked the biggest search in aviation history with the whereabouts of the jet still unknown to this day.
Since 2014, some 33 pieces of debris have been found in six countries – including South Africa and Madagascar – which experts believe proves the plane plunged into the Indian Ocean.
The last full-scale search for MH370 in 2018 by US robotics company Ocean Infinity – using unmanned underwater vehicles – covered nearly 50,000 square miles yet nothing was recovered.
Many theories have since emerged about what happened to those onboard MH370 and where the jet’s final resting place could be.
However, one expert claims to have found the exact spot where the plane could have crashed.
Vincent Lyne, a researcher at the University of Tasmania, said that the Malaysian Airlines flight was deliberately ploughed deep into the Broken Ridge – a 20,000ft deep hole in the Indian Ocean.
With underwater plateaus, volcanoes and deep ravines, Mr Lyne believes the place is a perfect hiding spot for the doomed MH370.
He wrote on social media: “This work changes the narrative of MH370’s disappearance from one of no-blame, fuel-starvation at the 7th arc, high-speed dive, to a mastermind pilot almost executing an incredible perfect disappearance in the Southern Indian Ocean.”
“With narrow steep sides, surrounded by massive ridges and other deep holes, it is filled with fine sediments – a perfect ‘hiding’ place.”
He argued that his research provided an exact location for the crash site – and that the plane was purposefully wrecked by the pilot.
“Encouragingly, we now know very precisely that MH-370 is where the longitude of Penang airport (the runway no less) intersects the Pilot-in-command home simulator track discovered and discarded by the FBI and officials as ‘irrelevant’.
“That premeditated iconic location harbours a very deep, 6,000-metre hole at the eastern end of the Broken Ridge within a rugged and dangerous ocean environment renowned for its wild fisheries and new deep-water species.”
Richard Godfrey, a retired British aerospace engineer who has spent the last decade tracking the flight’s rote and conducting his own investigation, previously made a similar claim.
He claimed he was able to locate the jet which he says lies 13,000ft below the surface of the ocean near Broken Ridge.
Mr Godfrey combined a new technology with satellite communications system data from the plane.
He said: “Together the two systems can be used to detect, identify and localise MH370 during its flight path into the Southern Indian Ocean.”
Why is MH370 still missing a decade on?
By Rebecca Husselbee, Deputy Foreign Editor
When an entire plane with 239 passengers mysteriously disappeared from the sky it left the world in utter disbelief – myself included.
How could an entire jet vanish into oblivion in a modern world when every move on land, sea and air is tracked? And how could it remain lost for a decade?
Having spent the last few years exploring the many theories on what MH370’s final moments might look like, from the bizarre to the complex, there is one hypothesis that answers every question for me.
Pilot Simon Hardy has left no stone unturned in his search for answers and having been at the helm of passenger flights for over 20 years he knows every inch of a Boeing 777 cockpit.
What makes his “technique, not a theory” even more compelling is his ability to access the world’s best flight simulators and sit in Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s seat as he commandeered the Malaysia Airlines and flew into the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean.
While others believe WSPR technology holds the key to finally discovering the wreckage, it’s never been proven and many in the MH370 community have questioned its reliability.
Many experts agree that the “suicidal” MH370 pilot was behind the plane’s demise – what we’ll never know is what his mindset was on that night and what motive he had to carry out such a chilling plan.
Passenger safety onboard in the aviation industry is rigorous and the likelihood of travellers being involved in a plane crash is 1 in 11 million.
But are airlines considering a pilot’s mental state when they sit at the controls of a jet that could be turned into a 300-ton death machine?
The Brit says he is “very confident” he has found the missing plane which he claims crashed at 8.19am.
“We have quite a lot of data from the satellite, we have oceanography, drift analysis, we have the performance data from Boeing, and now this new technology,” he added.
“All four align with one particular point in the Indian Ocean.”
The Broken Ridge location was not in the original 2015 search area and was missed by just 28km by Ocean Infinity in 2018, reports say.
However, the area was part of the 2016 search, 7news reports.
Mr Lyne is now urging officials to search the area he pointed to as a “high priority”.
He said: “Whether it will be searched or not is up to officials and search companies, but as far as science is concerned, we know why the previous searches failed and, likewise, science unmistakably points to where MH-370 lies.
“The proof awaits, as do many who have lost loved ones, and further lost in the confusing theories, wild speculations, and failed confident assurances based on flawed science.”
Many experts, including Mr Godfrey and Mr Lyne, fear the aircraft’s pilot – Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah – may have purposefully crashed the plane in a chilling mass murder-suicide.
Brit Boeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy believes the clues to this theory are buried in the flight documents.
He told The Sun how the addition of extra fuel and oxygen, as detailed in the logs shown above, could be proof that the plane’s disappearance was premeditated.
Mr Godfrey sensationally told Australia’s 7News that he believes the crash happened after a “hijacking” which was an “act of terrorism” by pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
The Brit claims the pilot “decided to divert his aircraft and make it disappear in one of the remotest places in the world.”
Another Pilot, who flew Malaysian Airlines flights along with Shah, previously claimed the pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and then crashed the plane in a murder-suicide.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to reconcile with the man I knew. But it’s the necessary conclusion,” the unnamed pilot told The Atlantic.
The pilot said that as a senior officer and examiner, it would have been easy to divert co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, out of the cockpit and then lock the door.