KUALA LUMPUR: The search area for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 should be expanded to the Broken Ridge region, slightly north of the existing search area.
Aviation expert Professor Dr Mohd Harridon Mohamed Suffian believed the aircraft could have glided down to a distance of between 1,000km and 2,000km from its last traced location just outside the seventh arc search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
“Drift analyses by independent experts also found that debris found in Madagascar and Africa established that the airplane is not in the current search area.
“A manned plane can glide between 1,000km and 2,000km from its last traced location. If the glide down theory is correct, the plane may be found mostly intact.
“This is based on the altitude and debris found in Madagascar and Africa, which are consistent with this theory, as bits of the plane have come off.
“The fuselage should also be at the site.”
Harridon said the theory had to be fully explored as the belief that the plane dived into the ocean was based on the final ping of the Inmarsat satellite, which had been exhausted, and the fact that the plane had yet to be found, despite a search operation covering 120,000 sq km of the ocean off Western Australia.
The theory that the plane had glided down resurfaced following a statement by Fugro, a company that runs the search operation for MH370.
It stated that the plane might have been slightly north of the current search area, indicating that it (Fugro) could have scoured the wrong patch of ocean for the last two years.
Harridon, however, did not discount other possibilities, including the initial theory that the plane dived into the ocean as it was not under the pilot’s control.
“Everything is guesswork until the transponder or the plane is found,” he said.
Before any debris was found, Harridon said the search based on the last ping and exploring the glide down option was not feasible as there was no debris to conduct drift analyses from.
He added that finding the plane was not as simple a task as it seemed.
This is because the ocean regions involved in the search area are not mapped. With depths of more than 7km, the main wreckage could be lodged under peaks and rocks.
Professor Datuk Azizan Abu Samah from Universiti Malaya’s Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences said radars might not have been able to detect that the plane had glided below their coverage.
He said there was only one ping, increasing the margin of error in calculating the possible location of the wreckage.
“If there were three or more pings within short intervals, we could have, at least, established the direction it was travelling in.
“The wreckage could be anywhere travelling at 400kph.”
He, however, said the whole thing was still a great mystery and all theories were speculative.
“The ocean is so vast, making it hard to detect wreckages. With luck and by the grace of God, it will be found,” he said.
Flight MH370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, disappeared on March 8, 2014.