The elusive mystery of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which went missing on March 8, 2014 while on a flying from Kuala Lampur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board, is in the limelight again. Vincent Lyne, a scientist from University of Tasmania, claims to have discovered the location of the doomed plane based on its final satellite communications. Moreover, Lyne claims that the flght’s descent was not a fuel-starved high-speed crash as was initially believed, but instead it was deliberately steered towards the spot.  

Lyne also suggested the exact location where the plane will be expected to be found in his research paper titled “Final Two Communications from MH370 Supports Controlled Eastward Descent Scenario”, which has now been accepted by the Journal of Navigation. 

What happened to Flight MH 370 on the day of its disappearance? 

On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 16:41 GMT (4:41 PM). It was due to arrive in Beijing at 6:30 local time (22:30 GMT). However, as per reports, the Air Traffic Control lost radio contact with the plane about an hour after takeoff.  

No distress call or message was reportedly sent from the plane. However, it sent its last ACARS transmission to ground control at 1:07, after which the expected transmission at 1:37 was not received. The last communication between the pilot and Air Traffic Control was revealed to be these chilling words, said by either the pilot or the co-pilot of the flight, “Good night, Malaysian three seven zero”. 

After a few minutes, the plane’s transponder was shut down after it crossed into Vietnam’s airspace over the South China Sea and the plane failed a scheduled check-in with the air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh city. Radar showed that the plane deviated from its plotted course over Cambodia and Vietnam to  head west instead and then north over the Andaman Sea.  

Final interactions with the plane from a ground station located it in one of two flight corridors, one between Thailand and Kazakhstan, the other between Indonesia and the southern Indian Ocean. 

Disappeared without a trace

Tracking data released by the Malaysian authorities several weeks after the plane’s disappearance revealed that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Australia. However, no trace of the plane’s wreckage along with any of the 239 passengers on board was found during search operations. An Australian-led search was conducted around 120,000 km of the Southern Indian Ocean using underwater drones and sonar equipment, but no trace of the missing flight was found. About a year later, debris was found along a beach in St. Andre on the north-eastern coast of France-controlled island, Réunion. The identity of the debris was confirmed by the French authorities. 

MH370 Mystery solved? 

Lyne shared in a LinkedIn post that the damage on the debris from the plane (wings, flap and flaperon) were similar to those sustained in the ‘controlled descent’ performed by Captain Sully on the Hudson River for a bird-struck flight on January 15, 2009. The findings coincided with the debris analyses conducted by prolific ex-Chief Canadian Air-crash Investigator Larry Vance, which also revealed that the plane had fuel and functioning engines during its descent. Hence, the work changes the narrative of the crash from a high-speed dive due to fuel exhaustion to a controlled eastward descent  

The landing would have resulted in a perfect disappearance were it not for the wing clipping a wave during descent and the plane’s final satellite communication discovered by Inmarsat. The satellite data revealed by the Malaysian authorities and Inmarsat revealed that the plane crashed far off Australia, somewhere in the Indian Ocean. 

He revealed the location of the plane by writing, “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.” He also revealed that the track was discovered and discarded by the FBI and officials as “irrelevant”. The co-ordinates coincide with a 6000m deep hole at the eastern end of a Broken Ridge renowned for an extremely treacherous ocean environment with wild fisheries and new deep-water fishes. 

“With narrow steep sides, surrounded by massive ridges and other deep holes, it is filled with fine sediments—a perfect “hiding place” he goes on to say. The information is yet to be confirmed by on-site searches. However, Lyne adamantly believes that the search is conclusively over and 10-year old mystery has finally been solved thanks to science.