July 30, 2015

expert reaction to potential wreckage from flight MH370

Debris from an aircraft thought to be a Boeing 777 has been found on an island in the Indian Ocean, and has been transported to France for testing as to whether it may be from the flight MH370 which went missing in March 2014.

Dr Erik van Sebille, Oceanographer at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said:

“Ocean current models support the hypothesis that the object found on Reunion could be a piece of debris from the flight MH370 wreckage.

“Starting from the spot where the object was found, we used computer simulations to retrace its path and determine where the aircraft might have entered the water 17 months ago. The chaotic nature of the ocean means that we can’t track the exact location, but we can pin it down to an area a few hundred miles in diameter off the coast of northwestern Australia. This location is consistent with the other evidence we have.

“Although previous search efforts have focussed on an area far southwest of Australia, this now seems like an improbable location for the crash, as strong ocean currents running from east to west in this region could not realistically have carried parts of the wreckage to Reunion.

“The holy grail now is determining the location of the aircraft’s black box, which is believed to be very close to the site of impact. The best way do to this would be to find more pieces of debris and then apply the same simulations to track their origin in the ocean. This process of triangulation is really the best opportunity we have to put the x on the map”

Declared interests

None declared