Last ditch bid to narrow search area after Malaysia, Australia and China agreed to suspend hunt for missing plane
INVESTIGATORS probing the disappearance of MH370 plan to dump replica debris into the sea in a bid to track its movement and find the crash site.
A wing flap, known as a flaperon, washed up on a beach on the French overseas territory of Reunion Island in the Southwestern Indian Ocean in July 2015.
A plane’s wingflap was found washed up on a beach on Reunion Island last year
Experts have now created replicas of the flap in order to study their movements in open water.
It is hoped the evidence can then be used to pinpoint more accurately the site of the crash and locate the bulk of the wreckage.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood said six will be sent to Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Tasmania.
Scientists there will try to figure out whether wind or ocean currents have more effect on how they drift.
And if they can secure the funding, Hood said they plan to attach satellite beacons and set them adrift near the suspected crash site to track their movements.
Barnacles on another flaperon found in Tanzania in June are also being analysed for clues as to what area they might have come from.
Peter Foley, the Australian bureau’s director of MH370 search operations, said the enhanced drift modelling techniques would hopefully narrow the search area to a 340 mile zone.
But he warned: “Even the best drift analysis is not going to narrow it down to X-marks-the-spot.”
So far, experts have scoured an area of around 46,000 square miles over two years in the search for the jet.
But searching a new area would require new funding after Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July to suspend the £122million hunt once the current search area had been combed.
That could take until December because of bad weather and 65ft swells in the stretch of ocean southwest of Australia.
However, some critics have warned investigators could have been looking in the wrong place all along.
The area was calculated based on the assumption the pilot wasn’t at the controls.
But those who believe Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked the plane argue that he could have glided it further than the current search area.
Officials recently confirmed rumours Shah had plotted a course on his home flight simulator over the area where the plane is believed to have come down, leading to fears the crash was deliberate.
In any case, Foley said finding the plane was the only chance of the solving the mystery of what happened on board MH370.
He added: “We will never know what happened to that aircraft until we find it.”
