UPDATE: On arrival at the MH370 search area in the early hours of this morning (December 31 Malaysia time), Ocean Infinity’s Armada 86 05 vessel stopped just outside what is known as the Blelly-Marchand area. It appears that autonomous underwater vehicles were deployed.

The ship then began to head north, to the east of the Blelly-Marchand area. The following images were put together by an investigator referred to in this article as Captain B.

3/12/2025

The Malaysian government has announced that the maritime exploration company Ocean Infinity will resume its search for MH370 on December 30 this year.

“Ocean Infinity has confirmed with the government of Malaysia that it will recommence seabed search operations for a total of 55 days, to be conducted intermittently,” the transport ministry said today (Wednesday).

The ministry said the search would be carried out in a targeted area “assessed to have the highest probability of locating the aircraft, in accordance with the service agreement entered between the government of Malaysia and Ocean Infinity on 25 March 2025”.

It added: “The latest development underscores the government of Malaysia’s commitment in providing closure to the families affected by this tragedy.”

Ocean Infinity is expected to use its Armada 86 05 robotic vessel for the resumed search. As of December 3, the vessel was being used for a separate mission in the San Bernardino Strait in the Philippines.

MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board. It was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

While some debris has been found that the Malaysian authorities say is from the missing plane, neither MH370 nor its voice and data recorders have been located.

Ocean Infinity suspended its new search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean on March 28 this year. The company cited seasonal weather changes and unavoidable prior commercial commitments.

In the southern Indian Ocean, the ‘search season’ is limited by the fact that the weather begins to become rough in May and only starts to improve in November.

In its earlier search this year Ocean Infinity used its Armada 78 06 robotic vessel.

Armada 78 06 was deployed in the southern Indian Ocean in April this year, but only officially began its search for MH370 on March 25 after its ‘no find, no fee’ contract with the Malaysian government was signed.

Full details about the terms and conditions of the search were not made available and no press release about the contract signing was issued, but Malaysia’s transport minister, Anthony Loke, said in March this year that the Malaysian government would not be required to pay Ocean Infinity unless the wreckage of the aircraft was discovered, “with a success fee amounting to US$70 million”.

Ocean Infinity said that it would be focusing in its new search on an area between latitudes 33°S and 36°S, wider from the 7th Arc than was previously searched.

The original decision to search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean was based on calculations by the British company Inmarsat that were based on satellite pings – or handshakes – from MH370. Inmarsat said MH370 was most likely to be found along what became known as the 7th Arc.

In an earlier search in 2018, Ocean Infinity used a leased Norwegian vessel, Seabed Constructor, and used its own Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), which are capable of operating in depths up to 6,000 metres.

The company now has new robotic ships that can be operated completely remotely, with no crew on board.

Initially, during their early missions, the ships in the Armada fleet do, however, require a minimal onboard crew. Armada 86 05 is currently being operated with a skeleton crew on board.

The AUVs used so far in the new search can spend up to four days submerged.

The search earlier this year focused on the following two hotspots:

• An area suggested by independent investigators Bobby Ulich and Victor Iannello that had already been partly searched, but which Iannello and Ulich said needed scouring again, with a widened scope. This area, which is about 2,000 km west of Perth, Australia, is centred on 34.2°S 93.8°E.
• An area suggested by Jean-Luc Marchand from Belgium and retired Air France pilot Patrick Blelly that had not previously been searched and is around a 35.7°S 93°E centrepoint.

At the beginning of March, Armada 78 06 went to the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson, south of Perth, for refuelling and reprovisioning and then returned to the Blelly/Marchand search zone.

Other ‘hotspots’

Other ‘hotspots’ that have been identified as possible locations for MH370 include:

• An area suggested by Australian airline captain Peter Turner that is between 25 and 45 nautical miles inside the 7thArc, near 34.2°S 93.2°E.
• Broken Ridge, at 32.5°S 96.5°E, which American amateur investigator Blaine Gibson and oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia say is the most important priority location. Gibson and Pattiaratchi argue that any new search should not be focused too narrowly along the 7th Arc and should include the area from 28.3°S to 33.2°S. Gibson has found, retrieved and/or delivered numerous pieces of debris believed to be from MH370.
• A location suggested by independent investigator Richard Godfrey that is centred on 29.128°S, 99.934°E. Less than half of the area Godfrey suggests has been scoured to date. Godfrey has conducted analyses using the Global Detection and Tracking of Any Aircraft Anywhere (GDTAAA) software based on Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) data. Initially Godfrey’s WSPR calculations attracted significant interest, but, over time, scepticism has grown, not least because those calculations have changed numerous times, going from a suggested crash site location at 33.17 °S, 95.3°E to one at 30.57°S, 98.75°E and now to the location centred on 29.128°S, 99.934°E.

Investigators ‘unable to determine the real cause’

There are numerous conflicting theories about what caused the disappearance of MH370. They range from a hijacking, mechanical failure, and the plane being shot down to Ashton Forbes’ much-derided theory that MH370 was abducted using advanced, classified US military technology.

Forbes is frequently mocked for arguing that, after MH370 experienced a lithium-ion battery fire, three plasma orbs surrounded the plane and teleported it through a wormhole-like portal.

He says that those who say they have debunked his theory are part of a cover-up and/or that the debunkers have themselves been debunked.

Many people continue to blame the chief pilot of MH370, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. This is despite there being no evidence proving that the captain brought down MH370 deliberately.

Contrary to what is alleged by certain self-appointed experts, it is not assumed within the airline industry that Captain Zaharie committed murder-suicide.

Many pilots think that Zaharie tried to save MH370 and those on board.

In its full report, the Malaysian International Civil Aviation Organisation Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370 said it was not of the opinion that Captain Zaharie caused the plane’s disappearance.

The 1,423-page full report was published on July 30, 2018, but it was inconclusive. The lead investigator, Kok Soo Chon, said the team was “unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of MH370”.

The team said that, after studying Captain Zaharie’s behavioural pattern on the CCTV recordings on the day of the flight during which MH370 disappeared, and the previous three flights, no significant behavioural changes were observed.

“On all the CCTV recordings the appearance was similar, i.e., well-groomed and attired. The gait, posture, facial expressions and mannerism were his normal characteristics,” they added. They said that Captain Zaharie’s ability to handle stress at work and home was reported to be good.

“There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability,” the team reported, adding that there were no significant changes in his lifestyle, and no interpersonal conflict or family stresses.

Possible oxygen bottle explosion

Several pilots consider a mechanical fault on MH370 to be the most likely cause of the plane’s demise.

Several experts have suggested that one of the crew’s oxygen bottles may have ruptured. One of them is a senior British Boeing 777 airline captain who asked not to be named and is referred to here as Captain A.

Captain A explains that emergency oxygen for the crew is stored in the avionics bay, which is located immediately beneath the flight deck.

He says that, if an oxygen bottle ruptured, it could be propelled into the fuselage structure, would breach the hull, and would cause decompression of the aircraft.

Captain A suggests that the transponder could have been disabled when hit by the valve end of a bottle, or the power to it severed as the bottles sit next to the power source. This, the pilot says, would cause the aircraft to disappear from radar and any number of other pieces of equipment could be affected by such an explosion.

“With the aircraft’s decompression, the pilots would be incapacitated within minutes because of hypoxia and the fact that the emergency crew oxygen supply was destroyed,” he told Changing Times.

“With the flight crew now disabled and/or unconscious, no immediate descent would be initiated, no radio call would be made, and the passengers and crew would also soon succumb to hypoxia despite the drop-down oxygen in the cabin.”

Captain A says that MH370’s erratic flight path could be explained by wiring damage caused by an explosion that could disable the autopilot and autothrottle.

“It is entirely possible that, after a decompression, the ensuing drop in temperature in the avionics bay could interfere with the information received by Inmarsat, thereby corrupting the data that was critical to their 7th Arc theory and invalidating the coordinates that were used in the search in the southern Indian Ocean.”

Captain A thinks the damage in the avionics bay would have caused the autopilot to fail.

“The damage to the pitot/static data [pressure measurements] feeding the flight computers would render the flight control into a basic (secondary) mode,” he said. “The autopilot doesn’t work in this mode.

“I think the pilots made the IGARI turn and then became unconscious.”

Captain A says there needs to be a trial to resolve the question of whether the transponder was turned off or it was the feed to the transponder that failed.

“Investigators need to test what happens in various scenarios, how different modes of shutdowns would affect what was seen in the last Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) transmissions,” he said.

“Until such a trial is conducted, people are just making stuff up to suit their narrative.”

‘7^th Arc calculation may be inaccurate’

Peter Turner, who has spent more than 6,000 hours researching MH370’s disappearance, also thinks one of the crew’s oxygen bottles ruptured and adjacent equipment was destroyed.

“The Left Wire Integration Panel was right next to the oxygen bottles,” he told Changing Times. “Everything that failed on MH370 relies on that box.”

Turner thinks MH370 may have diverted towards Banda Aceh airport via the NILAM and SANOB waypoints.

He also says that, if there was damage to the electronics bay, it’s highly probable that the calculations of the 7th Arc would be wrong.

“This would mean that the 7^th Arc should be a bit closer to Arc 6 and the search should be conducted inside Arc 7,” he said.

“I think the crew worked through the problems and got the autopilot back up and running. Then they programmed a diversion to an airport like Banda Aceh to try and save the plane, and that’s when they passed out.

“Then the aircraft would have followed the autopilot route, gone over Banda Aceh, and then continued south until it ran out of fuel.”

Turner explains that, after leaving Kuala Lumpur, MH370 flew towards the IGARI waypoint then made a right turn towards waypoint BITOD. It is at this point, he suggests, that the extra G loading set off one of the oxygen bottles. Ninety seconds later, he says, the crew turned left and headed back towards the Malay Peninsula.

Turner notes that the flight during which MH370 disappeared was the first flight after Malaysia serviced the bottles.

The crew’s two oxygen bottles were at a pressure of 1,120 PSI before they were serviced. They were refilled to 1,800 PSI, which is normal practice.

“If MH370 is found with a ruptured oxygen bottle, questions must be raised about the bottle’s maintenance history and Malaysia’s servicing practices,” Turner said.

‘Attempt to land at Penang’

Another airline pilot who also asked not to be named, whom I refer to here as Captain B, thinks that the MH370 pilots may have tried to land at Penang International Airport, but were unsuccessful.

“I am not sure if this was the case, but it is definitely something that needs to be considered,” Captain B, who holds licences from the civil aviation authorities of the United States, Australia, China and Indonesia, told Changing Times.

The main source of data for Captain B’s analysis is information captured by Malaysia’s military primary radar. This data was cited in the full ICAO safety investigation report.

The data is also available on the Geoscience Australia website. Jean-Luc Marchand and Patrick Blelly have made this data available for easy access on their MH370-CAPTION website.

The ICAO safety investigators used the military radar data when conducting flight simulator sessions to recreate the turn at IGARI.

Captain B says that three definitive events suggest strongly that there was an attempt to land on runway four at Penang airport:

• MH370 tracked directly over the waypoint ENDOR, which is in line with the standard arrival procedure for that runway,
• the plane also tracked directly over a point from which a course reversal procedure could be flown to enable it to line up with Penang airport’s runway four, and
• it turned right on a track of 267 ° Magnetic to commence the required course reversal procedure.

MH370’s track as captured by military radar as it crossed waypoint ENDOR, an approach waypoint for landing in Penang.

Captain B says it’s estimated that MH370 was flying with a ground speed of 475 knots. For the turn at IGARI to be completed in two minutes and ten seconds, a bank angle of approximately 31° was required. The autopilot has a limit of 25° angle of bank, so Captain B has concluded that the turn was manually flown by one of the pilots with the autopilot off.

“Making a turn at high altitude with the autopilot off is not standard airline procedure and may suggest the autopilot disengaged by itself and was not disengaged by the pilots,” he said. “This sometimes happens when there is an aircraft systems degradation caused by a malfunction.”

Captain B added: “If you overlay the flight path of MH370 as recorded by the primary radar at the Butterworth Air Force Base, it shows that MH370 flew almost directly over waypoint ENDOR, perhaps in preparation for a landing on runway four at Penang.”

The Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach chart for Penang’s runway four has changed, but, at the time MH370 disappeared, ENDOR was on the chart.

Another person who thinks that there was an attempt to land at Penang is Australian aviation enthusiast Michael Gilbert. He has speculated that there was a windshield heater fire that was fuelled by an oxygen leak in the plane’s cockpit.

Captain B says that, after MH370’s apparent second turn, which took it to the northwest towards the Andaman Sea and the Strait of Malacca, there were about 38 different course changes in a stretch of some 35 nautical miles as the plane headed up the Malacca Strait. This, he says, would indicate that the plane was not at that stage on automatic pilot.

He says that those track changes could mean that the plane was being controlled manually by someone flying it in an abrupt way with no real idea of where they were going, or that no one was in control of the aircraft.

It seemed as if the plane was just meandering up the Malacca Strait, he said. If there was pilot incapacitation, he says, that was probably where it would have started to happen.

Possible sightings of MH370

Captain B is not convinced that MH370 made it to the southern Indian Ocean.

He cites reports from locals in the Maldives who say they saw a low-flying jet fitting the description of MH370 on the day the plane disappeared.

If those were sightings of MH370, he says, then the Inmarsat data has to be incorrect because it has the plane going in a completely different direction. It is, Captain B says, a case of one or the other. If the Inmarsat data was correct, then the sightings in the Maldives were not of MH370.

Captain B has done a fuel analysis based on the “holding configuration” for the aircraft that shows that the Maldives sightings at about 6.15 a.m. local time could have been of MH370. According to the Inmarsat data, the plane would already have run out of fuel before then, but, according to Captain B’s analysis, it could have flown on until about 6.25 a.m. Maldives time.

One witness who thinks that she may have seen MH370 is Kate Tee. She says that, when she was sailing with her husband, Marc Horn, and another crew member to Phuket in Thailand, she saw a plane flying low above the Andaman Sea between northern Sumatra and Phuket on the night of March 7/8.

She said the windows of the plane glowed bright orange. She has described the glow as being like that of sodium lights. Behind the glow, she saw what appeared to be a trail of black smoke.

She said she first saw an orange speck at about 19:10 UTC and it was big and close by at about 19:20 to 19:25 UTC.

Tee said she couldn’t see any fire or flames, “just a plane glowing orange and surrounded by an orange glow like a halo”.

She said the plane flew across their stern north to south and was flying at an altitude of between 2,000 and 4,000 feet.

Tee said that she also saw two other planes cruising at a higher altitude, going from south to north. They appeared to have regular navigation lights.

Captain B wonders whether the glowing orange/reddish mist seen by Tee could might have been a lithium battery fire in the cargo hold being extinguished by a low-rate halon fire extinguisher system.

“It’s by regulation that the cargo hold fire extinguisher has a low-rate fire suppression system whereby the extinguishing agent is released at a low rate over a period of a few hours,” he told Changing Times.

Continued slurs against the pilot in command

In its desire for sensationalism, the mainstream media have delighted in using a Facebook photo of Captain Zaharie holding a meat cleaver (while preparing food) and looking crazed. The Australian and British media have been particularly avid in pushing the idea that Zaharie committed murder-suicide.

The much-touted idea that the captain was driven to act nefariously because of his political opinions is a red herring that is still being repeated in comments on social media.

Captain Zaharie was by no means in a minority in his opposition to the government that was in power in Malaysia in 2014. Many Malaysians opposed the then prime minister, Najib Razak, who is now in jail.

Zaharie supported the opposition politician (and now prime minister) Anwar Ibrahim, as did a huge number of other Malaysians. He was a member of Anwar’s party, along with thousands of other people.

Agence France-Presse reporter Shannon Teoh wrote the following in March 2014: “ … those who knew Zaharie rejected media reports that he was deeply upset by the Anwar case. Sivarasa Rasiah, an opposition member of parliament for the Kuala Lumpur suburb where Zaharie lives, remembers the pilot’s volunteer work on his campaign.

“‘He was one of hundreds, if not a thousand, who volunteered to campaign in the May (2013) elections and he did not know Anwar personally,’ said Sivarasa. ‘The claim that he is a (political) fanatic doesn’t deserve a response,’ said Peter Chong, Sivarasa’s aide.”

One of Zaharie’s five sisters, Sakinab Shah, will have nothing more to do with the mainstream media. She tells the story of what happened one time she gave an interview to a journalist about Zaharie and used the word “naughty”.

What she meant, and explained to the journalist at time, is that Zaharie was playful with people and would tease them. In the ensuing article, the journalist twisted Sakinab’s words to make it sound like she meant that her brother had extramarital affairs.

Asked by CNN’s Asia-Pacific editor, Andrew Stevens, to describe her brother, Sakinab said he was “very loving, wonderfully considerate and generous. A very, very generous younger brother – in fact most generous one of our family”.

Sakinab recalls that, before MH370 disappeared she, Zaharie, their sister Dah and another relative had been planning an extensive tour of Italy.

Zaharie’s home simulator

Much has been made of discoveries made on Captain Zaharie’s home simulator, but, contrary to widespread speculation, there was no route on the simulator that matched the path that MH370 is believed to have taken.

It is not even sure that the ‘route’ Zaharie allegedly programmed into the Indian Ocean was an actual route. Investigators just found waypoint coordinates in the computer’s ‘volume shadow’ information backup area, but the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) could not determine whether the waypoints came from one or more files.

They didn’t find any data that showed a similar route to that believed to have been flown by MH370.

The RMP, who seized the simulator from Zaharie’s home on March 15, 2014, said investigators found seven ‘manually programmed’ waypoint coordinates in the ‘volume shadow copy’ backup area of the captain’s computer that, when connected together, would create a flight path from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to an area in the southern Indian Ocean through the Andaman Sea.

The police said in their report, however, that they could not determine whether those waypoints came from one or more files.

The RMP report states that the coordinates were stored in a Volume Shadow Information (VSI) file dated February 3, 2014.

One independent investigator (a pilot and IT expert), who also asked not to be named, told Changing Times that the seven manually programmed waypoint coordinates spoken of by the RMP and found in the computer’s ‘volume shadow’ information backup area could not all have been backed up during Zaharie’s alleged 72-minute simulator session.

“After in-depth analysis, including a review of volume shadow copy functionality and real-world testing of the simulator setup, I concluded that at least four of these files were temporary files that Windows 7 would not have been able to back up during Zaharie’s alleged 72-minute session,” the expert told Changing Times.

“The claim that four temporally distinct files (with the same filename) were recovered from one snapshot contradicts Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) architecture.

“I suggest that these files were either created at a later date, after the simulator was seized, or introduced from another source.”

The RMP forensic report, dated May 19, 2014, documented more than 2,700 coordinates retrieved from separate file fragments. It said that most of them were “default game coordinates”. The RMP concluded that “there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations”.

Disinformation push

Despite the lack of evidence, there continues to be a strong disinformation push from those who consider Captain Zaharie to be guilty.

Two of the main proponents of the allegation that the captain committed murder-suicide are Richard Godfrey and Geoffrey Thomas, who co-host videos about aviation on YouTube and dismiss all challenges to that allegation.

YouTube users who have argued that there is no proof that Captain Zaharie deliberately brought down MH370 say that Thomas has censored their comments, but Thomas denies this.

Even though it is unfounded speculation, the claim that Zaharie’s home simulator is the “smoking gun” has been repeated by dozens of Thomas’s YouTube viewers.

Godfrey and Thomas have thousands of followers, many of whom amplify the anti-Zaharie propaganda with comments that range from misinformed supposition to abusive slurs.

Some of the ideas expressed in these comments are too outrageous to warrant a challenge. Commentators have claimed that Zaharie parachuted out of MH370 and that he had organised for someone in a boat to meet him and pick him up.

Godfrey relies heavily on analysis of the simulator data by Victor Ianello and Yves Guillaume and insists that Zaharie had planned a route “for a diversion into the southern Indian Ocean to fuel exhaustion”.

He now theorises that Zaharie had originally planned to crash Flight MH150 from Jeddah, which he flew on February 4, 2014, but later chose to crash MH370. He hypothesises that Zaharie did this because, on Flight MH370, he would be accompanied by a very junior co-pilot.

Godfrey has even written a paper about this, claiming that Zaharie discarded his original plan because there would have been an additional flight crew on board flight MH150 so “it would have been more of a risk to hijack the aircraft and divert it to the Southern Indian Ocean”.

One commentator, who uses the YouTube handle @sticktofacts, criticised Thomas and Godfrey for continuing to say that MH370’s transponder was “turned off”. This, @sticktofacts said, was based on nothing more than a guess.

@sticktofacts said the last ADS-B transmissions could have been caused by a power failure or data feeds to the transponder failing and went on to note that Thomas and Godfrey use WSPR tracking as proof that someone was in control of MH370 when it disappeared from radar. WSPR, @sticktofacts said, was “completely unproven”.

Even if WSPR works, @sticktofacts says, a meandering route could be explained by an autopilot-off, hypoxic ghost flight.

Godfrey and Thomas also say that MH370’s first turn was manually flown, but this, @sticktofacts said, could have been due to a severe technical failure sufficient to disable the autopilot.

“If you remove these three ideas, then there is absolutely NO evidence of nefarious intent,” @sticktofacts added.

Peter Turner has tried to replicate the scenario of the transponder being turned off in the cockpit of MH370 and he hasn’t been able to.

“I can’t replicate it from the transponder panel in the cockpit,” he said. “So, if I can’t do it from the cockpit, MH370 wasn’t hijacked.

“Same with the flight ID, which was deleted. If someone manually deleted the flight ID, a log-off message would have been sent, but no such message was ever received. Anyway, manually deleting the Flight ID doesn’t hide your identity. The aircraft’s ID is always sent, so what would be the point of deleting the flight ID?”

Aircrafts send two IDs to a satellite: the aircraft’s ID and the flight ID. The aircraft’s ID cannot be changed and is always sent. The flight ID must be manually entered by the crew as it varies to match the flight number.

“If there is a fault with the aircraft and the crew are trying to fix problems after a power interrupt or software reset, then the system reverts to a blank flight ID with just the aircraft ID, such as was received by the satellite from MH370 at 18:25 UTC,” Turner said.

“All this indicates that it wasn’t a hijack or a pilot suicide. It has to have been an accident.”

ICAO report criticised as ‘incomplete’

Several experts, and representatives of the next of kin of those on board MH370, have said that the ICAO full report is incomplete.

In an article on his website, Victor Iannello from the MH370 Independent Group of investigators wrote that the report, which was made up of a main document totalling 495 pages and six separate appendices, raised more questions than it answered.

He said that Malaysia was still failing to provide the raw military data that would allow an independent review.

The ICAO team’s report says there is no evidence to suggest that MH370 was flown by anyone other than the designated Malaysia Airlines pilots, but Kok Soo Chon said the team could not rule out the possibility that there was “unlawful interference” by a third party.

Talking about the plane’s diversion from its scheduled flight path, he said that, based on the military record, there was no evidence of a rapid change in altitude and speed that would indicate deliberate evasion of radar.

The report states: “Based on the team’s review of the military recorded radar display and printout, the aircraft’s flight path could not be determined, and there is no evidence of rapid altitude and/or speed changes to indicate that MH370 was evading radar.

“Without further evidence, the reason for the transponder information from the aircraft ceasing could not be determined.”

It has been determined, the report says, “that only the transponder signal of MH370 ceased from the ATC controller display whilst displays from other aircraft were still available”.

Debris

The ICAO report states that three items of debris – the flaperon that was found on Reunion island, and is still in the possession of the French authorities, a part of the right outboard flap, and a section of the left outboard flap – have been confirmed to be from MH370.

Seven pieces of debris, including some cabin interior items, were determined to be “almost certainly” from the plane.

The report adds that eight pieces of debris are “highly likely” to be from MH370.

In all, 59 pieces of MH370 debris either confirmed or thought to be from MH370 have been picked up. Gibson would describe 19 of the retrieved items as “key pieces”.

He says debris finds disprove the theory that MH370 was brought down in a controlled, intact ditching (a pilot murder–suicide).

Numerous small pieces of shattered debris from the main cabin have been recovered, he says, and the wing flap found in Tanzania was in a retracted position, i.e., in flight mode, not deployed as it would be during a landing.

Blaine Gibson with debris found in June 2016 on Île Sainte-Marie, Madagascar.

The airline pilot referred to earlier in this article as Captain A has conducted an analysis for Gibson and says the evidence for a high-energy, uncontrolled crash at fuel exhaustion is now overwhelming. “An uncontrolled spiral dive fits best with all the evidence,” he said.

“Most of more than fifty debris pieces that have been found indicate a high-energy impact.

“These pieces originate from all parts of the aircraft and many are from inside the cabin. Perhaps only three (the right flaperon, an outboard flap, and a spoiler) could be indicative of a low energy crash.”

Two of these pieces also indicate that the flaps were not deployed when they detached from the wing, the pilot says.

“The trailing edge damage seen on the three aforementioned pieces is either due to high-speed aerodynamic flutter or water impact forces during a controlled landing.

“Water impact can be ruled out as the flaps were never deployed, so the dynamics will not allow for the wing trailing edges to be dragged through the water.”

The lack of severe damage to these three key pieces, especially to their leading edges, means that they must have detached whilst airborne, the pilot concludes.

“As these pieces originate from the same area of the right wing it might be a clue that the right wing may have failed at this position before ocean impact,” he said.

Anthony Loke and Grace Subathirai Nathan, whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on board MH370, holding a piece of debris believed to be from a Boeing 777 floor panel. Photo from November 2018.

Previous searches

In 2018, Ocean Infinity spent more than three months searching for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The company scoured, and collected data from, more than 112,000 square kilometres of ocean floor, which is far in excess of the initial 25,000-square-kilometre target and almost the same area as was examined in the previous search over a period of two and a half years.

The previous Australian-led underwater search was suspended on January 17, 2017, after an area spanning 120,000 square kilometres was scoured.

New search ‘a welcome surprise’

K.S. Narendran, whose wife, Chandrika, was on board MH370 when the plane disappeared, said the Malaysian government’s announcement came as a welcome surprise.

“I hope the search extends to all recommended sites/coordinates coming from credible sources,” he said in a post on Facebook. “I doubt we will have another shot at searching after this one ends.”

Narendran said his wish was that the plane is found, and the southern Indian Ocean end-of-flight location is confirmed.

This, he said, would put the many other theories and explanations to rest and lend weight to the validity of some of the data and the approaches and analysis of various experts who have attempted to pinpoint a crash location.

“If the search returns a blank, I dread to ask if there is any acceptable basis left to look elsewhere,” Narendran said. “Do we really have a choice to not be open to looking?

“I can’t help but pause for a moment, incredulous. Close to 12 years now, we still know little about the cause and circumstances of MH370’s disappearance, or the whereabouts of what remains of the plane. No fresh leads. No leaks.”

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