Friday 29 Mar 2024
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(Oct 28): Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may never be found as there is too little evidence to go on, an aviation expert said.

Writing on his blog, California-based engineer and pilot Bruce Robertson said the lack of "hard evidence" related to the plane's disappearance "means the search will be very difficult".

"Very little hard evidence exists for the MH370 disappearance with most of the best coming from the satellite ping data," he wrote.

Robertson, who earlier this year suggested that MH370 had crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean due to toxic fumes from a fire caused by lithium-ion batteries, maintained that the pilots had succumbed to hypoxia and the passenger jet had flown on auto-pilot for several hours before plummeting into the water.

"With the cabin breached in multiple places, the plane fills with water and sinks within a few hours with little loss of contents," Robertson wrote.

"What debris does escape may someday be found on a Madagascar or African beach.

"Otherwise, the debris will forever circle counter-clockwise in the Southern Indian Ocean current."

In June, Robertson had hit out at search teams for "looking in the wrong place", saying that "much too much time and money" had been wasted on a "fruitless search".

He said the plane had likely taken a large radius left turn before then crashing into the ocean, west of Exmouth in western Australia, roughly 21 degrees south, 103 degrees east.

The current search zone spans an area further southwest, due west of Perth.

Flight MH370 disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. In August, the Australian Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) confirmed that a part of the aircraft known as a flaperon had been found in Reunion Island, but there has since been no further trace of debris.

All 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board are presumed dead after an official declaration from the government on Jan 29, classifying the incident as an accident based on international aviation rules. – The Malaysian Insider

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