MH370 hunters zero in on most likely site of wreckage
Search area for the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is narrowed down to a ‘hot spot’ in the southern Indian Ocean
Australian authorities have this morning announced they are one step closer to solving the biggest mystery in modern aviation history; the whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 , missing since March 2014.
More than three quarters of a new “hot spot” area within the current 120,000 square kilometre search zone has been scoured, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters in Canberra on Thursday. Investigators are focusing on the southern part of the zone, where the boundaries of the search have now been widened, Truss said.
Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told reporters that teams, armed with new analysis from Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group, are searching remaining areas of the hot spot and rechecking priority areas. Investigators have turned to 18th- century statistician Thomas Bayes to help map out the probable fate of the aircraft, he said.
“I am very confident in the Bayesian analysis,” Dolan said. There is precedence as the English theologian’s pioneering work on probability helped locate Air France Flight 447 almost two years after it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Investigators have fruitlessly trawled through more than 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) of sea bed underneath the southern Indian Ocean. The only solid evidence so far from Malaysia Airlines’ missing Boeing Co. 777 has been a wing component that washed up in July on Reunion Island -- 3,800 kilometers from the current search zone.
Flight 370 was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014 with 239 people on board when it disappeared. Investigators have concluded that someone on board intentionally disabled the aircraft’s tracking devices.