Malaysia Airlines MH370 search ‘in wrong area’ of ocean

The Dutch company leading the underwater hunt for the Malaysia Airlines plane, Flight MH370, says the plane might have glided down, rather than have dived, in its final moments, meaning they have been scouring the wrong patch of ocean for two years.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Searchers, led by engineering group, Fugro, have been combing an area the size of Greece.

That search, over 120,000 square kilometres of the southern Indian Ocean, off Western Australia, is expected to end in three months’ and could be called off after that, following a meeting today of key countries, Malaysia, China, and Australia.

The three agreed in April, 2015 that should the aircraft not be located within the search area, and in the absence of new, credible evidence, the search area would not be extended. So far, nothing has been found.

“If it’s not there, it means it’s somewhere else,” Fugro project director, Paul Kennedy, told Reuters.

If the plane glided down — meaning it was manned — it would have made it beyond the area marked out by calculations from satellite images.