The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew, it is one of the biggest aviation mysteries in the world.
But a British aeronautical engineer, who has spent more than a year working on the disaster, believes he has calculated where the MH 370.
Richard Godfrey thinks the Boeing 777 crashed in the Indian Ocean at 2. 000 miles west of Perth, Western Australia.
The aircraft disappeared from the radar during a flight in March of 2014.
Godfrey told the BBC that he hoped that “we can offer a closure to the relatives and give a response to the public and the aviation industry on what exactly happened to the MH 370 and how we prevent it in the future. ”
Combi There were different data sets that were previously kept in separate domains, to align them with this new location in the South Indian Ocean.
Godfrey said that was a “complicated exercise “, but previously there had simply been a lack of lateral thinking, across multiple disciplines, to deduce this.
” No one had the idea before combining Inmarsat satellite data, with Boeing performance data, with floating debris oceanographic data, with WSPR protocol net data, ”he said.
Godfrey indicated that the work with the team has progressed for a year and “we have done a lot of testing of this new idea and we have gained the confidence to apply it to the MH 370 ”.
The exact point determined by the data calculations is around 33 degrees south and 95 g East in the Indian Ocean.
Two exhaustive searches have been carried out of the MH 370 in the Indian Ocean, which have yielded inconclusive results.
These searches have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and while family members demand that their loved ones be found, the associated costs are enormous.
“Tangible evidence”
Grace Nathan lost her mother, Anne, in the accident.
“It really has been a continuous nightmare. There is never an end. We seem to go in circles and hit one brick wall after another. ”
“ We have been waiting for something new for a long time : a new advance, something new that justifies that the search starts again and that at least there was a more precise location for the search and to increase the chances of finding the plane, “he told the BBC.
Nathan, a criminal defense attorney living in Kuala Lumpur, wants the new data to be tested by aviation experts who can understand the science and physics behind location and show that the theory is credible.
“ We welcome all new findings , especially if they are based on tangible evidence. In this case, it is based on tangible evidence. They are things that can be calculated. They’re not just based on Google images or individual things that can’t be confirmed, ”he says.
Previous searches for MH 370 have been difficult due to the size of the search area.
Godfrey indicates that “an area of up to 120 has been searched . 000 km2 and a needle is not searched in a haystack, but something microscopic in a haystack . It is very difficult to carry it out. ”
4. 000 meters deep
The new proposal of the engineer is a circular radius of 40 nautical miles, much smaller than previous searches.
“The remains could be behind a cliff or in a canyon at the bottom of the ocean,” he says.
“And you may need to go through the area three or four times before you start picking up things.”
The remains could be at a depth of up to 4. 000 meters, he added.
More than thirty pieces of debris from the plane have been washed up on the beaches of the African coast and the islands of the Indian Ocean.
In 2009, Godfrey was supposed to travel on the Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, but due to work plans he had than to stay in Brazil.
That flight never reached its destination and was lost in the Atlantic. From this moment , he became interested in the flights lost at sea and their location.
Godfrey is a founding member of the Independent Group MH 370 and is an engineer with experience in the construction of automatic landing systems and autopilot systems for aircraft.
“I have worked a lot in information systems and handled a lot of data and that is important in this analysis. There’s a lot of data to go through and filter this needle in the haystack, ”he says.
David Gleave is the principal investigator for Aviation Safety Consultants. He has worked on plane crashes and disappearances for decades.
Gleave hopes there will be a new search but claims that “ funding the new search will be the problem “.
” Because we now have additional accurate data indicating where the crash site could be, that seems to be completely credible and consistent with other theories. ”
The timing and launch of another search will depend on the availability of specially designed equipment and also on the state of the sea.
Consistent evidence
“Realistically, we want to be in the Southern Ocean in the southern summer, which is now. So the search might as well start over at 12 months, because you cannot gather the resources and have them on the site in a short period of time. ”
“ But it may be that the Chinese take responsibility to search for their victims. Or private companies could search, sponsored by insurance companies, “he says.
There were 122 Chinese citizens aboard the MH 370, which departed from Kuala Lumpur but never reached its destination, Beijing.
The disappearance has given rise to a lot of theories about what happened.
One of the theories is that it was a “pilot hijacking”, where the pilot took control and deactivated the radar technology before turning over the Gulf of Thailand and heading west .
Gleave states that “if you are going to hide the plane in the Indian Ocean South, you need to make sure the aircraft is further west of the standard flight path, out of range of search and rescue aircraft from Australia. So this precise location is consistent with that theory. ”
The participation of the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) in the underwater search for the MH 370 concluded in October 2017.
The agency told the BBC that “the ATSB is not involved in any contemporaneous effort to establish the location of the aircraft. ”
“ Any decision to resume the search for the aircraft would be a matter for the Malaysian government, which is the State where the aircraft’s registration is registered. ”
The government of Malaysia and the government of China were contacted for a response.
Grace Nathan notes that “it is in the interest of global aviation security that this aircraft is found so that we can prevent something like this from happening in the future “.
” It goes beyond our need for closure. “
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