MH370 will be found in next eight weeks, claims British expert as search for wreckage switches to area of Indian Ocean where he believes plane made ‘controlled ditching’
- Boeing 777 went missing in the air in March 2014 with 239 people on board
- Pilot Simon Hardy believes plane performed 'controlled ditching' over sea
- Search has now moved to area of Indian Ocean where he believes it crashed
- But search party claim the search move is not related to Hardy's research
A pilot who has calculated the route of the missing flight MH370 believes the wreckage will be found within eight weeks after the search shifted south.
The deep sea hunt for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane has now moved to a remote area of the Indian Ocean, where Simon Hardy believes it crashed in a 'controlled ditching' into the sea.
Captain Hardy used an elaborate calculation to plot the course of the flight, which disappeared in March 2014, and says he is 'fairly confident' that the wreckage will be found in four to eight weeks.
The deep sea hunt for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane has now shifted to a remote area of the Indian Ocean, where Simon Hardy believes it crashed in a 'controlled ditching' into the sea
The British pilot's widely publicised calculations suggest that the Boeing 777 made a controlled ditching last year with 239 people aboard into deep ocean southwest of Australia
The patch that Hardy expects the wreckage to be found in will be searched throughout December, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed. The board is coordinating the search on Malaysia's behalf.
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But Australian authorities insist they are not being guided by the experienced Boeing 777 pilot's analysis, and are simply moving south as a matter of procedure.
Martin Dolan, the bureau's chief commissioner, said the search was moving farther south within a 120,000-square-kilometer (46,000-square-mile) priority area because the southern hemisphere spring had made the extreme conditions in the southern ocean calmer.
Malaysia Airlines MH370 - with 239 passengers and crew on board - went missing on March 8 2014 while flying to Beijing
'We're aware that we're in the area that Captain Hardy specifies, but we're in that area because it was next in our search sequence, and we've been moving progressively south because the weather is improving,' Dolan said.
Hardy's theory of where Flight 370 went after it inexplicably flew far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, has been widely published in recent months.
He used mathematical analysis and a flight simulator to plot the course he believed the airliner took when it vanished in one of aviation's most baffling mysteries.
Experts directing the search have discussed Hardy's theory with him. Hardy could not be immediately contacted for comment on Monday.
'There are many theories from members of the public and various independent experts and all are considered,' the bureau said in its statement, which described Hardy's analysis as credible.
But searchers do not accept a key aspect of Hardy's conclusion: that whoever was flying the plane made a controlled landing at sea, which allowed it to sink largely intact.
The only confirmed wreckage of Flight 370 to be recovered was a wing flap found on a remote Indian Ocean island in July.
Dolan said authorities still believe that the final satellite transmission from one of the jet's engines indicated that it was out of fuel, meaning it would have plummeted into the ocean and disintegrated.
Australia and Malaysia have split the cost of the search of the vast expanse of seabed that began in October last year based on satellite analysis of the jet's flight for more than six hours after it went off course.
The search, taking place more than 1,100miles off the Australian coast, has so far covered 27,000 square miles.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged an additional $14.5million (£9.6million) over the weekend to fund the continuing search. China lost 153 citizens in the disaster.
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