'MH370: The Final Search' to unveil new claims
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This month marked eight years since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radars not long after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. What happened to the 239 people on board and the aircraft itself is unknown. Pieces of debris belonging to the Boeing 777-200ER have been found in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean.
The first scraps were discovered on some islands just off the coast of Africa in July 2015.
Rather than offer hope, the materials have only prompted further questions and theories about what exactly happened.
Many amateur investigators have dedicated their lives to cracking the mystery of MH370, often spending years scrutinising every tiny scrap of detail.
Sergio Cavaiuolo, a systems engineer from Australia, this month published a research paper which claims to pinpoint the exact location of the plane and what happened to it.
In it, he states that “relying on science alone has not and cannot solve this mystery – not without reconciling the science with the ‘Human Factors’ contribution – ‘Real People’ – a number of key eye-witnesses that caught a glimpse of Flight MH370 at various moments in time during its last tragic flight”.
Mr Cavaiuolo goes on to set out, using data, information, and clues — what he calls “pieces of the puzzle” — to determine where MH370 lies.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his research is the eye-witness accounts.
A number of people have claimed to have spotted MH370 on its course, mostly from the Maldives, but their testimonies have largely been forgotten.
Mr Cavaiuolo claims that the eye-witnesses he draws on corroborate Inmarsat satellite data and flight path tracks which have previously been ignored.
British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat has relevant data obtained by its satellite 3F1, which communicated with MH370’s satcom during its final hours.
This data has allowed investigators to map out potential routes MH370 took after it flew off course.
Drawing from a reconstructed flight path, Mr Cavaioulo writes: “It shows that the Inmarsat satellite data and flight path track of MH370 corroborates several key eye-witness sightings that caught a glimpse of MH370 during its flight, including Miss Kate Tee’s sighting of MH370 (in the northwest of the Tip of Sumatra) and later (further west) the eye-witness sightings of MH370 having made it to the Maldives.
“The last two Handshakes in the Inmarsat satellite data [REF1] that occurred at times 00:11 and 00:19UTC/8Mar2014, produce HRTT RINGS P6 and P7 (the correct 7th ARC) respectively — this places MH370 (at that time) nowhere near the Southern Indian Ocean (SIO) but actually in the northwest Indian Ocean (NWIO) somewhere in the equatorial region below the Tip of India and near the Maldives.
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“The orange flight path track in Figure 13 extrapolates the path of MH370 from where it was at 00:19UTC (somewhere on the P7 HRTT RING – the 7th ARC), to the South Central Atolls region of the Maldives where MH370 was seen (by the first group of Maldivian eye-witnesses) inbound at 01:15UTC (6:15am local time, just after Sunrise) over the Island of Kudahuvadhoo in the Dhaalu Atoll.”
Later on, through a number of diagrams, he argues that MH370 veered off its course and headed west, flying over Aceh and across the northern Indian Ocean and into to the Maldives after passing Islands around the north/northeastern Tip of Sumatra “possibly tracking along its northeastern coastline inside the Malacca strait”.
He says eye-witnesses in the Maldives line up with the new data: “Figure 14 zooms in to the end of the flight path track of Figure 13 and picks up the trail of MH370 inbound into the Maldives and reconstructs the path of the plane over the islands based on the eye-witness observations as it flew over.
“These Maldivian sightings of MH370 (describing the manoeuvres of the plane) re-affirms that MH370 was still being actively flown.
“In fact, a pilot flying the plane is the only possible way that MH370 was able to make it to the Maldives at the time it arrived there (at 6:15am local time just after sunrise (01:15UTC/8Mar2014).
“Referring to Figure 9, the first group of Maldivian eye-witnesses were on the Island of Kudahuvadhoo (Dhaalu Atoll) and observed MH370 approach from the northwest of the island at 6:15am local time (just after sunrise) in low and level flight (doors and windows clearly visible, confirming also the Malaysia Airline’s red and blue stripes below the windows).
“It was very big and very loud and as it passed over the island, it banked (turned) and headed towards the southern tip of the Maldives.
“Shortly afterwards (on the adjacent Atoll further south), the same aircraft (MH370) was then seen again by a second group of eye-witnesses on Gaadhiffushi Island (Thaa Atoll) who described it as ‘a rocket with huge fins’ as it approached, recalling the blue stripe underneath the aircraft and some blue also on the tail as it circled several times over Gaadhiffushi Island before it continued out (south) over the Veymandoo Channel.”
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He went on to reference a handful of eye-witness accounts that have emerged in recent years from the Maldives:
Abdu Rasheed Ibrahim, 47, a court official
“I watched this very large plane bank slightly and I saw its colours — the red and blue lines — below the windows, then I heard the loud noise.
“It was unusual, very unusual. It was big and it was flying low. It was a holiday (Saturday) and most people had gone to bed.”
Ahmed Shiyaam, 34, IT manager at the local medical clinic.
“I’m very sure of what I saw on a very clear and bright day, and what I saw was not normal — the plane was very big, and low. I did not know until later that other people saw it too.”
Ahmed Ibrahim, 40
“This was not a normal sight — the plane was different. It was very big, very noisy, flying low. Later that afternoon on the beach I was told the news about the missing plane. I think this is the same flight.”
“First, I saw the plane flying towards me over water. When it was over my head I saw it starting to turn away.
“At first glance, I did not know it was a missing plane. I didn’t know that a plane was missing. I went straight home and told my wife about it. I told my family, ‘I saw this strange plane’. This is the biggest plane I have ever seen from this island.
“My family says, ‘It might be the Malaysian plane’. I have seen pictures of the missing plane — I believe that I saw that plane. At the time it was lost, I strongly felt those people who were searching should come here.”
Mr Cavaiuolo concludes that MH370 is somewhere “in the Veymandoo Channel in the South-Central Atolls of the Maldives and it is the highest probability location (in the history of the search) of where the missing main fuselage wreckage of MH370 and the 239 lost souls have likely been resting”.
In 2015, a year after the crash, Maldivian police began responding to several sightings of debris washed up along the northern atolls of the archipelago.
But nothing ever came of it ‒ neither the sightings nor the debris.
There have been two extensive searches of the Indian Ocean from MH370, which have both yielded inconclusive results.
They have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and while there is demand from family members to find their loved ones, the costs associated are enormous.
Late last year, Richard Godfrey, a British aeronautical engineer, suggested a new location that investigators should hunt for the wreckage.
Combining different data sets, his research determined an exact point: around 33 degrees south and 95 degrees east in the Indian Ocean.
This proposal is a circle radius of 40 nautical miles, far smaller than previous searches.
He told the BBC: “The wreckage could be behind a cliff or in a canyon on the ocean floor.
“And you need maybe three or four passes before you start to pick things up.”
He added that the wreckage could lie as far as 4,000 metres deep.
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