MH370: Scientists Confident Aircraft Is North Of Actual Search Zone

KUALA LUMPUR, April 22 (Bernama) -- Top Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) are confident that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 aircraft is most likely located north of the actual search zone. CSIRO’s principal research scientist Dr David Griffin said the new report’s finding support the conclusions of the new search area identified by the First Principles Review, released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the leading agency for the MH370 search, in December last year. “It indicates that the most likely location of MH370 is in the new search area identified and recommended by the First Principles Review Report, and most likely at the southern end of that, near 35 degrees south. “We cannot be absolutely certain, but that is where all the evidence we have point us, and this new work leaves us more confident in our findings,” Dr Griffin said in a report made available on the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s (ATSB) website Friday. The First Principles Review report identified an area of approximately 25,000 sq km to the north of the original search area, as the area with the highest probability of containing the aircraft wreckage. MH370 disappeared while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014. Its final flight path was believed to have ended in the southern Indian Ocean. In their latest testing, Dr Griffin said the new report featured data and analysis from ocean testing of an actual Boeing 777 flaperon – part of a plane’s wing, which has added an extra level of assurance to the findings from their earlier drift modelling work. The tests wanted to see if the genuine flaperon drifted straight downwind like the replicas, or off at an angle, and at what speed through the water. “We’ve found that an actual flaperon goes about 20 degrees to the left, and faster than the replicas, as we thought it might. The arrival of MH370’s flaperon at La Reunion in July 2015 now makes perfect sense,’ he said. According to Dr Griffin, it was important to know how the flaperon and the other parts of MH370, which have been found, responded to wind, waves and the currents of the Indian Ocean. “We add both together in our model to simulate the drift across the ocean, then compare the results with observations of where debris was and wasn’t found, in order to deduce the location of the aircraft,” he said. -- BERNAMA