MH370: Missing Malaysian Airlines flight could be found in '5 to 15 days' as investigators call for new search

MH370: Missing Malaysian Airlines flight could be found in '5 to 15 days' as investigators call for new search

WATCH: Investigators Jean-Luc Marchand and Captain Patrick Blelly say a search for MH370 could take five to 15 days

GB News
Georgina Cutler

By Georgina Cutler


Published: 15/02/2024

- 13:16

Updated: 15/02/2024

- 13:19

The fate of the missing flight and its 227 passengers and 12 crew members remains unknown

The mystery behind where the Malaysian Airlines MH370 flight disappeared to could be solved "in days" with new technology and a new "very small" search zone, investigators have said.

The search for MH370 - which vanished around 38 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur airport in southern Malaysia in 2014 - has been investigated by Aerospace expert Jean-Luc Marchand and pilot Captain Patrick Blelly.


The experts say the aircraft could be found with a "five to 15 day" search effort as "increased" technology has improved the capacity of scanning the bottom of the ocean.

Following the disaster, governments and private companies have carried out searches but the plane has never been found and the fate of its 227 passengers and 12 crew members remains unknown.

Jean-Luc Marchand and pilot Captain Patrick Blelly

The mystery behind where the Malaysian Airlines MH370 flight disappeared to could be solved 'in days' with new technology and a new 'very small' search zone, investigators have said

GB News/ Getty

A330/A340 Captain Blelly told GB News: "We do expect we can find the aircraft probably in our zone

"We think we can find it because we think this aircraft was piloted until then and we've a new search lower and softer compared to the previous searches, so we can expect to find this aircraft.

"But we must have a decision from the Malaysian authorities to perform a new search in this area."

In 2018 Ocean Infinity carried out a search for the wreck, and said it would be interested in a restarting its search on a “no find, no fee” basis.

Retired Programme Manager on Air Traffic Management, Marchand added: "What we point out as a zone, for our understanding and how it could have happened, is a very small zone.

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"And so considering what Ocean Infinity declared a year ago, more than a year ago actually they have much increased their capacity to scan the bottom of the ocean.

"And that's why we we we think it would take between let's say 5 to 15 days to find the aircraft if the soil of the bottom of the ocean is relatively flat and that we don't know exactly."

According to their in-depth investigations, the flight took “a sad journey” to remain as “invisible as possible” and ended in the southeast of the Indian Ocean.

Their latest MH370 study complies both aeronautical, technical and operational perspectives and concludes that the plane’s transponder was turned off and the aircraft made a U-turn away from the flight path.

Marchand said: "I think that it has not been found because there are so many valuables, so many things to analyse and to understand that you have to make hypothesis and this hypothesis leads you to a certain direction.

"And now the research has been done, the hypothesis if that if the aircraft was not piloted, it would have fallen vertical of the last contact with the satellite, which to our understanding and our reading of the events and the data, is not what we think happened.

Relatives of passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 hold a sign

The MH370 flight disappeared in March 2014

Getty

"We think it was piloted until the end, the very end with a gliding phase leading something around 100 nautical miles away from where it has been searched so far and a little bit more, let's say outside of the Arc."

The team believes it is likely the aircraft was intentionally ditched.

The experts hope a new search will be carried “this year maybe next year” but Malaysian authorities must approve the investigation.

Captain Blelly said: "We're not so sure what the next search will be, but we do expect a no find, no fee.

"But say Ocean Infinity find the aircraft, somebody must pay. Maybe Malaysian, Australian, Chinese, I don't know - but somebody must to pay. Last time it was $20 million, maybe the next one will be more expensive."

Marchand added: "We are just offering these decision makers the results of our analysis saying, here is a good area to search and we are convinced it's a good area according to our analysis."

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