The aeronautical engineer believes the plane will be found near the western coast of Australia.
An aeronautical engineer claims to have discovered an overlooked piece of the puzzle that could solve the “perfect crime” of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just as fresh attempts to recover the plane resume.
The Boeing 777, with its 12 Malaysian crew and 227 passengers, disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a routine flight to Beijing.
The plane disappeared from radar coverage while flying over the Andaman Sea, shortly after deviating from its planned route. Satellites continued to receive hourly signals from the plane, indicating it was still flying, for hours until it is believed to have run out of fuel.
The craft remains the center of aviation’s greatest mystery and represents the most fatal incident involving a missing plane.
American marine robotics company Ocean Infinity, which located Sir Ernest Shackleton’s missing ship Endurance in 2022, is now preparing a new attempt to find the wreckage, after coming up empty-handed from a similar search in 2018.
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Ismail Hamad, Egypt Air’s chief engineer, told the Mirror that although he does not rule out a “perfect crime” and that the Malaysian plane ended up on one of the lakes or abandoned airstrips dotted around the Philippine islands, there is one thing he believes is being overlooked.
Hamad said the Malaysian government should abandon its persistent search off the coast of Perth and “do the right and positive thing by taking into account the deviation of the plane’s magnetic compass to first estimate the intended search area.”
He believes that a hijacker would have landed the plane on one of the abandoned landing strips or in the lakes of the labyrinth of the Philippine archipelago, made up of 7,641 islands.
Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport announced that Ocean Infinity has relaunched a 55-day intermittent search. A search for Armada 86 05 resulted in a vessel arriving at a designated search area with two autonomous underwater vehicles.
Hamad says the plane’s location can be predicted by looking at “the deviation between the plane’s compass magnetic north and Earth’s true north.”
He said: “That deviation value resulting from a continuous seven-hour flight from Malacca directly to the plane’s drop point will trace a logical arc southwards in the Indian Ocean, but not in the same previously searched and very deep area off the coast of Perth or in the 6000m depths off Broken Ridge.”
Instead, Hamad believes the plane will be in a “corridor just offshore and near the western coast of Australia, a relatively shallow area where debris could be close to the ocean surface or detectable by sonar with existing technology.”
He added: “This is not conjecture, but it is an inevitability of engineering if we follow the fundamentals of aviation.” Speaking about the wreckage found near the east coast of Africa, Hamad said: “We found no signs of damage, indicating the collision of the plane with the turbulent surface of the ocean water and the subsequent explosion of the plane due to the saturation of its tanks with fuel vapor.
“We cannot find on these pieces any damage such as dents, soot appearance or dark discoloration due to the explosion of the tanks. I believe that the compass drift value in combination with fuel consumption equations and contact data from Inmarsat satellites will reduce the official search arc area to almost 10 percent of the current radius.”
“Relying solely on signals from Inmarsat satellites has trapped investigators in a decade of confusion. If we assume that the plane completed its path south by relying only on the plane’s gyro-stabilized magnetic compass to deliberately steer without an autopilot system to evade detection, we will find its final resting place.”
