On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777, disappeared from the radar shortly after departure from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite unprecedented search efforts, neither the plane nor the 239 people onboard were ever found, with just a few sad shards washing up over the next half dozen years. Today, researchers are taking a different tack, using pieces of a Boeing 777 in hopes of “reverse engineering” where the rest of the plane may be. The fragments were discovered on Reunion Island in 2015.
The initiative, dubbed the Finding MH370 Initiative, will be led by science journalist and private pilot Jeff Wise. It plans to drop aircraft components into the ocean to study later and analyze their drift patterns, viewing this as a potential breakthrough in locating the final resting place of the missing aircraft. Having published hundreds of articles and appeared on numerous TV shows addressing the mystery of MH370’s disappearance, Wise is one of the best experts to come up with such an initiative.
The plan includes releasing a flaperon, fitted with sensors, into the Indian Ocean, identified as a piece from a Boeing 777. Over an 18-month period, the drift of this flaperon will be monitored by Wise’s team in analyzing its movement, along with the marine organisms that grow on it. By studying these organisms, they hope to get some evidence on where in the ocean the part may have come from.
In 2015, a part of MH370 washed up on the shores of Saint-Denis, Reunion Island. The drift of these pieces has since been studied by scientists, but the contradictions it has brought up have not helped arrive at a consensus. For instance, the barnacles found on the parts were too young, leading to the assertion of about one year passing between the time the plane went missing and the pieces went into the water. Barnacles were also found on parts of the flaperon above the waterline, an occurrence not common with barnacles.
This new approach aims to address these mysteries and provide a clearer understanding of MH370’s fate, potentially bringing answers to one of aviation’s most baffling mysteries.
