Day 726 — New debris at Mozambique

A man found a piece of Boeing 777 wreckage off the Mozambique coast. Blaine Gibson has been traveling around the Indian Ocean for one year in a quest to solve the mystery of missing Malaysia flight MH370. He is a U.S. lawyer from Seattle, is spearheading his own self-funded hunt for the missing plane in an exhaustive search that has taken him from the Maldives, to Mauritius and Myanmar.
"I've been very involved in the search for Malaysia 370, just out of personal interest and in a private group -- not in a for-profit way or journalistic way," Gibson told. "I went for the one year commemoration in Kuala Lumpur and met some of the family members and families and it inspired me to keep on looking."
He has since trawled beaches, spoken to witnesses, and interviewed people who have reported debris; all in a singular effort to discover the truth of what happened to the ill-fated flight. "Most experts and the official search authorities believe the plane flew south rather than north," Gibson writes in his blog. "However one year of searching the Southern Indian ocean has failed to discover any debris."

Day 511 — Hydrodynamic simulation model

As the world waits for the French to declare the origins of a Boeing 777 flaperon, a group of Dutch hydrodynamic experts has released modelling they believe shows the MH370 search is occurring in the wrong place.

The engineers from independent research institute Deltares, produced the simulation model based on the belief the wing flap is from the missing aircraft.

Using their knowledge of surface currents, Marten van Ormondt and Fedor Baart found that particles released in the northern part of the search off central Western Australia reached the coast of Reunion Island within a year of release.

“Those released at the southern section do not travel as far and do not make it to Africa within the simulation period,” the researchers said.

Day 511 — Debris 'definitely' from lost flight

Confirmation that plane debris washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island is from missing Malaysian airlines MH370 appears imminent.

A team from aircraft maker Boeing has been dispatched to France to confirm that barnacle-encrusted debris is from the plane that disappeared in March last year with 239 people on board.

Sources close to Boeing have been quoted in the United States as saying the company believes the two-metre long wing part known as a flaperon is from MH370, but company experts would confirm it when they arrived at the offices of France's crash investigation agency laboratory in Toulouse over the weekend.

New debris washed ashore on the island of Reunion have revived hopes of unlocking one of aviation's biggest mysteries. Details are seen for a liquid soap container label, marked Jakarta - Indonesia, that was part of newly-discovered debris washed onto the beach at Saint-Andre, some 4,000km from the area where MH370 is thought to have gone down.

Day 510 — Oceanographer predicted debris

An oceanographer in Australia who predicted that debris from MH370 could wash up on the island of Réunion a year ago has said the part found on a beach is “most likely” to be from the missing plane.

Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi’s drew up a “drift map” last year showing how floating matter from the Boeing 777 could be carried as far as Madagascar within 18 months.

It has now been more than 16 months since the plane disappeared on 8 March last year and yesterday’s discovery believed to be a wing “flaperon”, could be the first trace of it ever found.

Prof Pattiaratchi and his team used data on global ocean currents to model how a plane entering the water at several “splash points” along MH370’s presumed flight path would break up and travel across the Indian Ocean.




“We predicted this 12 months ago,” Prof Pattiaratchi said, referring to the Réunion discovery.

“A lot of (debris) would most likely be coming up in Madagascar because it’s got a much larger surface area than Réunion.”

Prof Pattiaratchi’s map predicted that the same current that swirled around the two smaller islands would carry any debris beyond to the Madagascan coast in the following weeks.

The oceanographer was reluctant to class a suitcase found today at the same site in Réunion as another possible remnant from the plane.

The battered piece of luggage, washed up in Saint-André, has been taken for further investigation by police but Prof Pattiaratchi said most cases would be unlikely to survive such a long period in the water intact.

He does not expect much floating evidence of the plane to be found, suggesting that anything large enough to be noticeable from above would be been spotted over the last 500 days of multinational searches.

Day 509 — Suitcase found

Reports of a suitcase washing ashore at the same location as possible MH370 debris have emerged but as yet there is no confirmation the suitcase is linked to the earlier debris.

A local journalist tweeted a photograph of the latest discovery but there is no evidence that the tattered luggage is from the missing flight.

French language website linfo.re has reported that a gardener found the bag near where the debris was discovered.

This latest development comes as Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the wreckage is “very likely from a Boeing 777”.

“Initial reports suggest that the debris is very likely to be from a Boeing 777, but we need to verify whether it is from flight MH370,” Najib said in a statement on his Facebook page.

Deputy PM Warren Truss described the discovery of wreckage as a “major lead” in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Mr Truss said a number seen on the piece of plane debris, BB670, is not a serial number but could be a maintenance number.