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.

Day 508 — Debris found

After a long, more than a year of research, they finally found a debris in the western Indian Ocean nerar to Madagascar on Wednesday appears to be part of a Boeing 777, the same model as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that disappeared in 2014, according to a source close to the investigation.

The source said there is a unique element to the Boeing 777's flaperon, a wing component, that Boeing observers believe they are seeing in photos.

The debris was found Wednesday off the coast of Reunion Island, a French department in the western Indian Ocean. It is being examined to determine whether it is connected to flight MH370, a member of the French air force in Reunion said Wednesday.

The debris was found off the coast of St. Andre, a community on the island, according to Adjutant Christian Retournat.





Boeing officials conducted an initial assessment of the debris using photographs. The source stressed the observations are preliminary.

Day 398 — Ships in the vicinity

When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 inexplicably changed course on 8 March 2014 and from all indications eventually flew to its doom in the southern Indian Ocean, it must have crossed paths with the shipping below. Mike Chillit (@MikeChillit) tweeted graphic archiving trackable shipping when MH370 crashed.

Note that the very closely spaced of the yellow dots do not in most cases indicate separate ships, but the same ship at each reporting interval during the day. The darker blue shading shows the priority search portion of the so called 7th arc positions from which an incomplete signal from an engine monitoring computer on board MH370 was sent to an Inmarsat satellite parked above the equator on the western side of the Indian Ocean at the moment 777 is believed to have struck the water after its fuel was exhausted.

Had any of the shipping that could have conceivably been under those possible flight paths noticed MH370 at the relevant times, it could allow the discarding or modification of some of the estimated flight paths and potential debris zones on the bottom of an ocean where the key areas have only just been surveyed so that they could be safely examined at closer range by towed deep sea sonar scanning devices.

Day 365 — After one year

The Malaysian Safety Investigation Team for MH370 issued a factual report, exactly one year after the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went missing.

The 584 page document details factual findings following examinations of ATC radar and radio recordings, maintenance records, cargo information etc.

The Investigation Team is now conducting analysis of the factual information and is considering the following areas:

• Airworthiness & Maintenance and Aircraft Systems;
• ATC operations from 1719 to 2232 UTC on 7th March 2014 [0119 to 0632 MYT on 8th March 2014];
• Cargo consignment;
• Crew Profile;
• Diversion from Filed Flight Plan route;
• Organisational and Management Information of DCA and MAS; and
• Satellite Communications (SATCOM).

The report reveals that the battery powering one black box's locator beacon expired over a year before the incident.

The old battery means that crews searching the southern Indian Ocean likely wouldn't have picked up a signal from the black box even if they were floating right over it. In the weeks after the disappearance, crews searched hastily to try and find a black box before the batteries ran out of power. They're required to last at least 30 days after a crash.

According to the report, an error in maintenance records kept the battery from being replaced. Nevertheless, the flight data recorder would have continued logging data during the flight even if its locator beacon battery was dead. The battery for the other black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was up to date and search crews would have noticed its locator pings had they been in its vicinity.

Day 362 — MH370 search could be scaled back

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott expressed hope missing Flight MH370 will be found, but suggested the search may be scaled back as he marked one year since it vanished.

"I do reassure the families of our hope and expectation that the ongoing search will succeed," Abbott told parliament in Canberra. "I can't promise that the search will go on at this intensity forever but we will continue our very best efforts to resolve this mystery and provide some answers."

Australia is leading the hunt in the Indian Ocean about 1,600 kilometres off its west coast, with four ships using sophisticated sonar systems to scour a huge underwater area. The vessels are focusing on a 60,000 square kilometre priority zone, with the search scheduled to end in May. More than 40 percent of the ocean floor has been explored to date. The intensive search - jointly funded by Australia and Malaysia with a budget of $93 million - has so far only turned up a few shipping containers.

"It's a very expensive search. We want to make sure that when we run over (a possible debris field), we know we don't miss it by accident," Fugro's MH370 search head Paul Kennedy said Thursday. "Because we'll never go back there again. It's a one-shot deal."

Day 360 — No debris, only shipping containers

The intensive underwater hunt for missing plane MH370 has so far turned up just a few shipping containers - and no sign of the jet, the head of the Australian agency leading the search said today. Chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Martin Dolan said that while several manmade items - mostly shipping containers - have been detected during a sonar search, they had found nothing resembling debris from the Malaysia Airlines jet.

Australian and Malaysian authorities have narrowed the search area to a vast 60,000 square kilometre zone - and they have so far scoured around 40 per cent of it, Dolan said. The ATSB expects the priority area search to be completed in May 2015, but Dolan said it was too soon to say if the hunt could extend beyond then when weather conditions in the remote region worsen. “The decision about what’s next, which is hypothetical at this stage, is one for governments,” Dolan told AFP. “From our point of view... we’ve only searched 40 per cent of it, and our focus is on searching the rest of that area and we expect to find the aircraft there. We just can’t guarantee it will happen.”

The commissioner said search officials have categorised objects they found into three levels - with level one classed as items that have “at least some characteristics of an aircraft debris field”. So far the search has turned up eight “level twos” and more that 100 “level threes”, he said. “The sorts of things we’re tending to pick up are shipping containers,” Dolan said, which are defined as level twos, while level threes are usually geological features.