If it’s not found, much of the story we’ve been told will turn out to be false.
This article originally ran in New York magazine on February 26, 2025.
The third search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has begun, 11 years after the plane practically vanished. On Sunday, a ship belonging to the American maritime-survey company Ocean Infinity arrived at a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have crashed. It then deployed a trio of advanced robot subs three miles under the waves to scan the seabed using sonar waves. If successful, the effort will locate the wreckage of the aircraft together with the black boxes that will allow investigators to solve the mystery. If not, it will effectively disprove the analysis underlying the seabed search and suggest that officials bungled some fundamental assumptions.
The first underwater search for the missing plane was launched more than a decade ago, months after MH370 disappeared from air-traffic controllers’ screens on March 8, 2014, during a routine red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. Scientists at the satellite-communications company Inmarsat later found that the plane had sent seven automatic radio signals before vanishing for good. In analyzing the data, scientists were able to extract a route from Malaysia into the southern Indian Ocean and concluded that the plane’s wreckage must lie near the end point of this path. Australia, which was responsible for finding the plane due to the search-and-rescue zone, hired a Dutch marine-survey company, Fugro, which dispatched a trio of ships to drag underwater sensors over the seabed. At first, officials were highly confident that they would locate the plane in short order, with one boasting that they had a 97 percent chance of success. But the plane was not in the search area measuring 46,000 square miles. Fugro increased the size of the search zone, then increased it again, without success. In 2017, the search was abandoned.
Hopes for finding the plane on the seabed would have ended there had not Ocean Infinity stepped forward the following year and offered to restart the search on its own dime, with payment only forthcoming if it was successful in finding MH370. Ocean Infinity used newer technology: autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that could prowl the depths in packs. Deployed from a single ship, the AUVs scanned an area nearly as big as the first search in a fraction of the time. But this effort, too, was in vain, and Ocean Infinity’s second search was called off in May 2018.
In the years since its first search, Ocean Infinity has earned a name for itself as a highly capable underwater-survey company, not least by locating the wreck of a missing Argentine submarine in 2018. Since 2022, Ocean Infinity has launched a fleet of eight state-of-the-art, 250-foot-long ships that are capable of operating autonomously. It is one of these, Armada 78 06, that is currently on station in the search area, tending a flotilla of AUVs.
After the second search, there was no reason to continue looking. Any reasonable scenario involving the plane’s direction, speed, or changes in heading would have resulted in an end point in the ocean that had already been scanned. Malaysia, which retained overall responsibility for the investigation, announced that it would not authorize any further searches unless “new and credible information” emerged indicating where exactly the plane had ended up.
No such information was forthcoming, but over the years various independent researchers continued to study the mystery, with some speculating that various lines of evidence all indicated a final resting place close to 35 degrees south latitude. The area had already been searched twice, but the ocean floor is rugged enough that the wreckage just might have been missed by earlier searches because it had fallen behind an outcropping or into a ravine. (Alternatively, if someone had hijacked the plane, they might have put it into an extended glide that took it beyond the area scanned so far.) It’s this area that Ocean Infinity has now begun to search, less than a tenth of the size of previous searches. If the wreckage is there, the AUVs will likely find it quickly.
Given the scope of the search, it’s entirely possible that the seabed scan will be finished before the 11th anniversary of MH370’s disappearance in two weeks. If the wreckage is found, Armada 78 06 will likely deploy a different kind of robot sub called an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) to retrieve the black boxes, including a flight-data recorder that will show exactly how the plane flew into the southern ocean and a cockpit voice recorder that may contain clues about what happened to the pilots.
If the wreckage is not found, the picture will be altogether different. The plane’s absence will strongly suggest that the authorities must have made a fundamental error when they analyzed the Inmarsat data. It will no longer be possible to say that they were just unlucky, that they happened to draw a line around a part of the probability distribution that didn’t include the plane. By this point, every point in the ocean where the plane could plausibly have gone will have been searched. One or more of their assumptions must have been wrong.
There could be a positive outcome to the failure of the third and final seabed search: a long-overdue realization that investigators have been sleepwalking down a dead-end path. This, hopefully, will spur those responsible for finding the plane to acknowledge the failure of the past approach and bring in fresh blood. The case is too important to let go with a shrug and a wave of the hand. Eleven years ago, 239 people disappeared into the night. Until we make every effort to figure out what happened — including taking the painful step of admitting that all our past efforts were misguided — then we’ll never solve the case, and there will be no way to say for sure that the same won’t happen again.
Hi Jeff, that’s a great article. I am an admirer of your work on MH370 and my own research and theory has some important aspects in common with your own, as outlined in your ‘The Taking of MH370’.
I am not an aviation expert but am an independent journalist in Australia and have had several articles published on MH370/MH17. If you have time, please read my most recent one. It was published in The Spectator Australia behind a paywall but the full article is on my blog:
https://pettblog.com/2025/01/15/mh370-at-the-communist-crossroads/
Regards,
Craig
@Jeff Wise
Agreed- If the plane isn’t found following this new search it should provide conclusive evidence that the flight did not terminate near the 7th arc. It should also raise the question of an intentional purpose to mislead the investigation by falsifying the Inmarsat data that the search hinged on. A lot of questions will be answered, including the seemingly never ending promotion of Godfrey and WSPR being credible in the search. It will be very interesting if they come up empty again.
Yes, one of the reasons I do hope that the search continues (that being up in the air as I type these words) is that the more the area is searched, the stronger the evidence that the plane didn’t go south.
Thanks, Craig. Really nice article. Let me know if I can help out going forward.
Pett is right.
We need to talk – badly. All about tube snails, and control surfaces in all the wrong configurations. (flaps @ 5 ?)
Bet you didn’t chase down the Bansi and Eunice angles, did you?
Nor Gaddifushi either. Then there is the conundrum about the coincidental (and very suspicious) failure of the CTBTO HA 08 N…
How about the tree-top terror episode in the Emirates?
All connected…
I won’t exchange over the net any longer, so this will have to be via landline. (360) 830-0457
Regards:
W.A. (Bill) Harrington, a retired radar engineer, and long time researcher into the loss of the *only* RC-135E to ever fly. Talk about a big mystery!
Could the plane sink into parts underneath the ocean? It will not float because of cargo. It can explode twice again with the batteries. Litathium explain also cause the melt of objects. I think titan and titanic.
If wings flew off the plane during a fire exhibition , it could dip plane downward while everyone on the plane sleep. They didn’t have enough time to react. Cellphone can ring and go to voice mail as long as their Stateline and wifi on plane. People have to look at before take off checklist. Everything check normal.
Since Malaysia airport not strict intheir policies and their protests their reputation as well as captain, they rule out theories. It government conspiracy like that Japanese air crash into the mountains.
A person who perfect normal and such may not seem crazy. That’s the problem he too happy and has martial problems. A such obsession over women can play part of mental health.
Jeff, as you still probably remember I was convinced of a planned and deliberate vanishing of the plane from the start till it’s very end quite soon. So I didn’t accept the uncontrolled high-speed dive near the 7th arc on which the previous searches were based. Direct (by the found debris) and indirect by the negative search results and the gathered data sofar, prove to me the plane recovered from a steep descent and glided under pilot controle to it’s (calcuated) final destination at somewhere around 32.5S/96.5E.
You know I’ve been in this for almost the same lenght as you and did considerable research. Any new search not allowing a possible glide of ~60Nm to the east of the 7th arc between ~32S/33S is deamed to fail I’m sure. Keep going Jeff 🙂
Thanks Ge Rijn! Yes we’ve been at it a long time. It’s possible that they’ll search out to 60nm if they continue the current seabed search but I think 32/33 South might be a bit further north than they’ll go.
Greetings, Jeff!
You might remember that I have been posting on your blog during the early years after 2014. When I first commented, I pointed out that anomalies in the message log published in the Factual Information report indicated that at least one VHF message was missing. Malaysia has since confirmed that this was indeed the case.
I’m still thinking about what really happened. Given certain geopolitical developments, I now believe you might be right that Russia could have been involved in the hijacking of MH370. I also continue to find it strange that, at one point, it was claimed the plane was over Cambodia — even though it was supposed to be flying along the coast of Vietnam. That confusion between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control over who was responsible for further action gave the perpetrators valuable time.
On the other hand, while I do think your theory that Russia wanted to distract from its annexation of Crimea at the time, in hindsight has merit, I’m not convinced that this alone is a plausible motive. Have you considered whether China might also have had an interest in the plane’s disappearance? After all, why would China side with Russia, especially considering that many Chinese nationals were on board? To be sure, these included Uyghurs and employees of a US-based company (but I’m not saying they were the reason for this operation). China was therefore directly involved in both the accident investigation and search efforts, alongside Malaysia and Australia. And how can Russian interference alone explain Malaysia’ third aircraft loss (AirAsia 8501).
In Europe, we’ve recently seen similar patterns. For example, there was one incident involving the Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3, which sabotaged data cables in the Baltic Sea — possibly on behalf of Russia. There have also been a few recent aircraft incidents that show clear signs of Russian involvement.
Hello Jeff, we’ll see. One thing you say is quite right. When they don’t find the plane this time we’ll be sure it’s not there (negative evidence).
If they skipp the 32/33S area till ~60nm east of the 7th arc it will not be found for sure (imo). It might just as well has ended in Russia or anywhere else in it’s global range.