[ad_1] The Malaysian government’s commitment to revealing the cause of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been cast in doubt by a
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The Malaysian government’s commitment to revealing the cause of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been cast in doubt by a prominent investigator into the tragedy.
Despite recent proposals for new search areas and the expressed eagerness of United States-based marine technology company Ocean Infinity to deploy unmanned vessels, the fate of MH370 remains uncertain.
British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, an independent investigator who co-authored a study using Weak Signal Propagation Reporter technology to map the plane’s flight path, called the response from authorities into question.
“In my view, the Malaysian government does not want another underwater search for the main wreckage of MH370,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
He pointed to a lack of willingness to spend money on the endeavour. He also cited an incident where debris handed over by his colleague Blaine Gibson in 2022 remained stranded in Madagascar due to Malaysia’s failure to pay air cargo fees for repatriation.
Two separate reports in the past four months have recommended new search areas in the southern Indian Ocean for the missing Boeing 777, which vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.
However, any new search remains in limbo without the green light from the Malaysian government, whose sovereign wealth fund owns Malaysia Airlines.
Mr Godfrey’s team presented their findings as “credible new evidence,” suggesting the plane may have gone down in an expanse of ocean about 1500 kilometres west of Perth, only half of which was covered by earlier underwater searches.
Another investigative group led by retired French airline and air force pilot Patrick Blelly and aeronautics expert Jean-Luc Marchand proposed an unexplored area of the sea floor that could be inspected in as few as 10 days.
A retired fisherman Kit Olver claimed that his trawling net pulled up the wing of a “big jet airlines” off the coast of South Australia in late 2014.
Underwater surveyor Peter Waring, an expert in sea floor surveying, suggested that Olver’s claim was worth investigating.
The fate of MH370 has been marred by conspiracy theories, including that the plane was hijacked by Russians, that it landed at a US military base on Diego Garcia, and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s theory that the US Central Intelligence Agency was covering up knowledge of the incident.
Recent analyses lean towards the more plausible suggestion that an experienced pilot deliberately brought the plane down.
Mr Marchand stopped short of directly accusing MH370 pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, noting he and Mr Blelly couldn’t be excluded from responsibility for the “fully piloted, fatal one-way journey.”
Despite these developments, Mr Godfrey highlighted the lack of response from the Malaysian government to various papers and information presented by his team.
The Malaysian government, which has previously stated its willingness to reopen the search if compelling new information emerges, did not comment on the claims in the SMH.
Family members of those on board, including six Australians, have been left in limbo for nearly a decade, with the main body of the aircraft still unrecovered.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) led the initial search, covering 120,000 square kilometres of the sea floor at the cost of $200 million before the search was halted in 2017.
In 2018, Ocean Infinity undertook its own operation to find MH370.
Ocean Infinity Chief Executive Oliver Plunkett expressed hope that their experienced team and marine robotics would be instructed in 2024, but definitive plans still need to be made.
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