An aircraft engineer asserts the discovery of a crucial element that may unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, coinciding with renewed efforts to locate the aircraft. The Boeing 777, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers, went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014 after departing from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.
After deviating from its planned course and vanishing from radar over the Andaman Sea, the plane continued to emit signals via satellites, suggesting it was still airborne until presumably running out of fuel. This incident remains one of aviation’s most baffling enigmas and the deadliest case of a missing aircraft.
Ocean Infinity, a U.S. marine robotics company that successfully located Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship Endurance in 2022, is gearing up for a fresh search mission to find the wreckage of Flight 370, following an unsuccessful attempt in 2018.
Ismail Hamad, the chief engineer at Egypt Air, shared insights suggesting that the Malaysian government should reconsider their search strategy near Perth and focus on analyzing the deviation of the plane’s magnetic compass to determine a more accurate search area. Hamad speculates that a hijacker might have landed the aircraft on one of the numerous abandoned airstrips or lakes within the Philippine archipelago.
Malaysia’s Transport Ministry announced the relaunch of a 55-day intermittent search operation by Ocean Infinity with the deployment of an Armada 86 05 vessel equipped with autonomous underwater vehicles. Hamad proposes that the aircraft’s location could be inferred by examining the magnetic compass deviation in conjunction with flight data.
He predicts that the aircraft’s path, deduced from the compass deviation over a continuous seven-hour flight from Malacca, would lead southward into the Indian Ocean, potentially within a shallower zone near the western Australian coast. Hamad emphasizes that this deduction is rooted in engineering principles rather than guesswork.
Addressing the debris discovered near the East Coast of Africa, Hamad notes the absence of typical damage indicators that would suggest a catastrophic crash or explosion, leading him to refine the search area based on compass data and fuel consumption equations.
Highlighting the limitations of relying solely on Inmarsat satellite signals for the investigation, Hamad proposes that by considering the aircraft’s potential deliberate deviation without autopilot assistance, the final resting place could be pinpointed with greater accuracy.