On May 3, 2024, Ocean Unlimited, a private subsea exploration company headquartered in Texas, USA, submitted another application to Malaysia to re-search for MH370. The company claims it has scientific evidence that the missing plane ended up hiding at the bottom of the Indian Ocean at a depth of 4,000 meters, and proposes a new "no find, no charge" search operation.
It is reported that Ocean Unlimited has proposed a credible new search plan, and the company has previously tried to find the missing MH370 flight in 2016 and 2018 respectively, but despite great efforts, no breakthrough has been achieved. The previous agreement was that if Ocean Unlimited was able to find MH370, Malaysia promised to offer up to $70 million in rewards in return.
At present, the company has submitted evidence and relevant documents for the third time for review by relevant departments. Based on recent consultations, there is a process that will take approximately three months to complete before this application from Ocean Unlimited can be finalized. If all goes well, Ocean Infinity will begin the search mission in November 2024.
Since the disappearance of flight MH370 10 years ago on March 8, 2014, the whereabouts of the aircraft remain an unsolved mystery, despite several large-scale search operations by several countries and international organizations. In recent years, the mysteries and dynamics surrounding it have been attracting the attention of the world, and while its exact location has not been found, the ocean has provided some new evidence and clues for people.
The suspected wreckage of flight MH370 has been found on beaches in Mossel Bay in South Africa, Reunion Island, Tanzania and Mauritius at various locations around the Indian Ocean. The wreckage includes parts such as outboard flaps, wing fragments, and flaperons. Experts identified the wreckage and confirmed that most of it belonged to a Boeing 777 aircraft, but not all of the wreckage was directly linked to flight MH370.
Since the disappearance of the flight, an international panel of experts has been meticulously scrutinizing the data to reveal the possible trajectory of the aircraft. Although these analyses have revealed the flight path that the aircraft may have followed before its disappearance, it has not yet been possible to pinpoint the final location of MH370, leaving a glimmer of suspense.
This follows a large-scale deep-sea sonar survey in the Indian Ocean region by an international search team led by Australia. Although the search did not uncover any wreckage of the aircraft, the sonar data provided valuable additional information to reveal the undersea topography of the area.
In addition to the official search activities, a number of private organizations and individuals were involved in the search for MH370, using a variety of technologies and methods, including underwater drones and underwater acoustic systems, dedicated to the search for the missing aircraft, showing great enthusiasm and effort.
Brian Gibson, a lawyer and explorer from Seattle, USA, found a 130 cm x 55 cm triangular three-layer wreck off the coast of Inhambane province in Mozambique, with features consistent with the water level of the Boeing 777. This discovery brings new hope to the search for flight MH370 and may provide clues to reveal the aircraft's final location.
More researchers and aviation experts persevered, exhaustively simulating and analysing flight data from flight MH370 with the aim of reconstructing the plane's last moments before it disappeared and exploring possible causes of the crash. In the process, British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey has been using an innovative tracking technology, WSPR, to help find the missing aircraft for many years. This technology uses a globally distributed network of "weak propagation reporters" and data collected by related software to provide important support for locating the final location of MH370.
Richard Godfrey confidently said he had pinpointed the location of the MH370 aircraft. He is sure that with an in-depth search of the designated area of about 74.08 square kilometers, there is a high probability that MH370 will be found. The area is located in the Indian Ocean, about 1,993 kilometers west of Perth, Australia, at a depth of about 4,000 meters below sea level.
Godfrey's report noted that MH370 made one last communication with a satellite before losing contact and crashed over the Indian Ocean about a minute later. The area where the plane eventually crashed was on a vast ocean plateau with canyons and underwater volcanoes, at the bottom of a massive seafloor ridge.
The site is not within the search area designated by Australia in 2015, but is located in the northern part of a search area that was expanded to 120,000 square kilometres in 2016. Regrettably, when Ocean Unlimited conducted a search in 2018, it was only 28 kilometers away from the location, again missing out on a key discovery.
Malaysia Airlines MH370 incident review
On 8 March 2014, Malaysia Airlines operated flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft with registration number 9M-MRO. A total of 239 people were on board, including 227 passengers and 12 crew members. The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:40 midnight local time and flew normally on the scheduled route until 1:21 a.m., when the plane's transponder suddenly turned off.
Subsequently, at 1:30 a.m., Malaysian air traffic controllers discovered that flight MH370 was missing over the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and Vietnam. Its last radar signal disappeared from Malaysia's radar at 2:22 a.m. This bizarre event quickly spread across the globe and became the focus of international attention.
Two days after the incident, a large-scale search operation was launched, initially focusing on the areas around Malaysia and Vietnam. However, with the analysis of newly collected satellite data, the search was subsequently extended to a vast seafloor area near southwestern Australia.
In the years that followed, the international community mobilized tens of thousands of troops, nearly 100 aircraft, and more than 110 ships to carry out search and rescue operations on an unprecedented scale. Unfortunately, despite costly and protracted search and rescue efforts at sea, on islands and even on land, MH370 and its passengers were never found.
Since then, debris associated with flight MH370 has been found at multiple locations in the Indian Ocean. For example, in 2015 and 2016, parts such as the flaps of aircraft were washed onto the beaches of Reunion Island, Tanzania and Mauritius. The fragments were later identified and many were identified as original parts from the 9M-MRO aircraft, providing important clues to unravel the mystery of MH370's disappearance.
On June 12, 2016, a similar wreckage was found at a specific location in the Indian Ocean, identified as the right forward wheel door of aircraft 9M-MRO. By October 2020, more wreckage had washed up on the shores of Australia, reviving public attention over the disappearance of MH370. Initially, the fragments were thought to be unlikely to belong to MH370. However, in July 2023, the wreckage was confirmed to be from the crashed flight MH370.