THE seven-year search for flight MH370 has cost £85million and been described as “looking for something microscopic in a haystack”.

During that time experts and amateur detectives have written 150 books about the world’s biggest aviation mystery, which claimed the lives of 239 passengers and crew.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 lost contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) less than an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, on March 8, 2014.

Military intelligence revealed the plane had suddenly diverted from its destination of Beijing, China, to head west over the Indian Ocean.

Theories behind its disappearance included a terrorist hijacking, catastrophic malfunction or a mass murder-suicide by one of the pilots.

But a retired British aerospace engineer believes he has located the doomed Boeing 777 1,197 miles west of Perth, Western Australia.

Richard Godfrey, 71, says he has worked eight hours a day for seven years researching ham radio data to help solve the mystery.

When an armada of search vessels last set out to find MH370, they were scouring 46,000 square miles — half the size of the United Kingdom.

But Richard pinpoints the crash site 33.177°S 95.300°E and has narrowed the search area down to just 115 square miles.

He tells The Sun: “I am very hopeful Flight MH370 will be found. I understand why it hasn’t been found until now.

'INTENSE PRESSURE'

“It is very difficult underwater terrain, there are canyons and cliff faces and even volcanoes down there on the seafloor.

“At 4,000m deep it’s very dark and very cold, intense pressure, but with the right equipment it can be found.”

The mystery behind MH370’s final journey is hidden in its black box, which records flight data and cockpit conversations. Only by recovering the aircraft’s wreckage will authorities finally learn the truth.

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Richard, who lives in Frankfurt, Germany, was drawn to the story because of his own aeronautical brush with death.

In May 2009 he had been booked on to Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, to his home city. But he was asked to stay on in South America on business and delayed his departure date by two weeks.

Flight 447 disappeared with 288 people onboard and its resting place in the Atlantic was only discovered two years later.

Using data from the aircraft’s black box, French investigators concluded that technical failure and pilot error were to blame for the tragedy.

Richard says: “When I saw that Air France 447 had crashed in the middle of the Atlantic I got involved in reading up on that story and followed the underwater search for the wreckage.

“I dodged death. There but for the grace of God go I.

“When I saw what happened with MH370 I saw parallels and had to look into it.” 

Despite several pieces of debris from the plane washing up on the coast of Africa and Indian Ocean islands, some relatives of the victims still hope their loved ones are alive. 

A popular conspiracy theory is that MH370 was diverted to an island or to Pakistan for the purposes of terrorism.

Richard, who worked on the British laboratory that went up in the Space Shuttle, says: “People still have an illusion of their loved ones being held captive somewhere, it’s very hard to put the matter to rest and move on in life. 

“It’s natural to cling on to any hope.”

He revealed that a personal tragedy in his own life reinforced his belief that the victims’ relatives should have a conclusive answer. 

Richard says: “I lost my sister in a car accident years ago. I could fly the body home. I could have closure.” After the last communication between MH370 and the Malaysian ATC, the plane’s transponder — which communicates with ground radar — was shut down. 

But a satellite from above the Indian Ocean picked up data from the aircraft in the form of automatic hourly pings.

Richard has spent a year going through files from radio enthusiasts. They send out hundreds of test signals every two minutes and collect them on a database.

He explains: “When an aircraft passes through a radio wave it can disturb the radio wave.

“In the old days when you had your radio on and you lived near an airport, and an aircraft came into land, your radio wave would disappear for a while.” He discovered 143 were made during MH370’s seven-hour flight. By pain-stakingly matching them up with information from other sources, such as debris, Richard is convinced his findings are correct.

Richard, who is a founding member of the MH370 Independent Group, says: “I am still putting the hours in. I get to my desk normally at 8am, work for eight hours, fold up the laptop and go down the pub with my mates, otherwise I think it would drive me crazy.” 

I get to my desk normally at 8am, work for eight hours, fold up the laptop and go down the pub with my mates, otherwise I think it would drive me crazy.

Remarkably, it hasn’t led to marital stress. Richard, who publishes his findings on his blog mh370search. com, says: “I am married and I’m not divorced as a result of this. I think my wife is sympathetic, but she might think I’m a bit obsessive and obstinate to carry on so long. I want to get answers and solve this mystery.”

In the seven years since the crash, data and military intelligence has suggested MH370 continued on its path over the Indian Ocean for almost eight hours before running out of fuel.

While his scientific mind can provide firm answers to the whereabouts of MH370, Richard can only hypothesise about how the plane came to crash. 

He suspects the Malaysian authorities could be covering up Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s culpability. The “sad and lonely” pilot had spent hours on a flight simulator in his home and rehearsed the plane’s fatal route. Richard says: “I am trying to keep an open mind, meanwhile I am mindful of the fact that the FBI found deleted files on Captain Zahari Shah’s home flight simulator showing a route simulated to the Indian Ocean to fuel exhaustion.

“In my analysis of the (real-life) flight, the pilot was tracking towards this simulator end point. It’s a bit of a smoking gun.”

Richard speculates that Shah, 53, was communicating with the Malaysian authorities during this time.

Shah was a strong supporter of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed shortly before the doomed flight, and one theory is that the captain could have been demanding his release. The thoery goes that when no agreement was reached, Shah decided to ditch the plane. 

Richard has ruled out other key theories. He explains: “I don’t think it is an accident. An aircraft doesn’t fly on for seven and a half hours if it has got a fire on board or a deep cabin depressurisation, or any other technical issue of any substance.”

What is needed now is for someone to stump up the cash for a renewed search and if the Malaysians won’t do it, Richard says there are billionaire tech donors willing to step in. 

But they won’t need another flotilla of Navy ships. He explains: “They can launch an underwater search from an unmanned, autonomous surface vessel.”

He adds: “I want to do the analysis and find the plane.”

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