What Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370? Newly Revealed Data Suggest Plane Went Into Uncontrolled Dive
An independent group looking into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 were able to come to a possible conclusion of the fate of the aircraft. The team suggests that the plane could have gone into an uncontrolled "spiral dive" prior to its impact into the ocean.
A team of aviation experts and analysts called The Independent Group collaborates the theories first put forward by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, according to The West Australian.
Theories have surfaced about Flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, suggesting that the plane could have been "landed" by one of the pilots on the ocean. This new finding contradicts these speculations, as new data from an Inmarsat satellite were sent over to the team.
The data from the satellite has records of the plane's previous flight from Beijing to Kula Lumpur, designated as MH371. Victor Iannello of The Independent Group described the previous flight as unremarkable. "The previous flight, MH371, seems to have been normal in all respects," he said.
The ill-fated flight, however, was very much different. "Using the satellite data from MH371, we have a higher level of confidence that for MH370 the aircraft was in an increasingly steep descent at its final log-on," Iannello explained.
The Boeing 777 aircraft was carrying 239 people on board on that day. Search efforts covering the southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft's wreckage is believed to be located, were conducted until January of this year.
With more than 120,000 square kilometers of underwater combed over for signs of the aircraft, the search efforts still yielded no positive results. As such, the three countries operating the joint effort agreed to suspend the search effort until new information comes to light, as announced in their statement.
"The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness. It is consistent with decisions made by our three countries in the July 2016 Ministerial Tripartite meeting in Putrajaya Malaysia," the search group explained.