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.