Featured Image Credit: National Geographic / Paul Kane/Getty Images
Topics: Travel
Yasmeen Hamadeh
A scientist has claimed that he's found the 'perfect hiding place' for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Over 10 years ago, the Malaysia Airlines plane seemed to vanish into thin air after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.
In total, there were 239 people on board including 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
Funerals were held for everyone onboard flight MH370, and despite search parties reporting they found debris from the presumed plane crash, the aircraft has never been discovered.
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While theories on what happened to flight MH370 and where it's located have been floating around for years, a researcher has recently claimed that he believes he's figured out where the plane is located.
Australian scientist Vincent Lyne has been working on a research paper, currently titled 'Final Two Communications from MH370 Suggests Controlled Eastward Descent', that details what happened to flight MH370 and that's recently been accepted into the Journal of Navigation.
While celebrating the news of the paper's imminent publication on LinkedIn, Lyne shared that his findings suggest that the plane was deliberately crashed.
"This work changes the narrative of MH370's disappearance from one of no-blame, fuel-starvation at the 7th arc, high-speed drive, to a mastermind pilot almost executing an incredible perfect-disappearance in the Southern Indian Ocean." he wrote.
"In fact, it would have worked were it not for MH370 ploughing its right wing through a wave, and the discovery of the regular interrogation satellite communications by Inmarsat — a brilliant discovery also announced in the Journal of Navigation."
Lyne went on to claim that the damage to MH370's wings, flap, and flaperon reveal that the plane went through a 'controlled ditching' effort by its pilot similar to one performed by Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger on the Hudson river in 2009.
"This justifies beyond doubt the original claim, based on brilliant, skilled, and very careful debris-damage analyses, by decorated ex-Chief Canadian Air-crash Investigator Larry Vance, that MH370 had fuel and running engines when it underwent a masterful 'controlled ditching' and not a high-speed fuel-starved crash," Lyne added.
"But encouragingly we now know very precisely that MH370 is where the longitude of Penang airport (the runway no less) intersects the Pilot-in-Command home simulator track discovered and discarded by the FBI and officials as 'irrelevant'.
"That premeditated iconic location harbors a very deep 6000 m hole at the eastern end of the Broken Ridge within a very rugged and dangerous ocean environment renowned for its wild fisheries and new deep-water species.
"With narrow steep sides, surrounded by massive ridges and other deep holes, it is filled with fine sediments — a perfect 'hiding' place.
"That location needs to be verified as a high priority. Whether it will be searched or not is up to officials and search companies," Lyne added.
"But as far as science is concerned, we know why the previous searches failed and likewise science unmistakably points to where MH370 lies."
Lyne works at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.