Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is back in the news after it was revealed that the search for the doomed plane will resume on Sunday. Australian officials leading the search are very optimistic that the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will be found very soon thanks to the new data they have gathered.
After a four-month hiatus, the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will resume on Sunday October 5th.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished on March 8th, 2014 with 239 people on board while traveling from from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is one of the greatest aviation mysteries and has many conspiracy theories (it was taken by aliens, or the government is hiding the plane somewhere.)
The hunt for the Boeing Co. 777-200 in the Indian Ocean will be lead by the GO Phoenix, which is an Australian ship hired by the Malaysian government that is expected to look for wreckage until 2015 if necessary.
Two more Dutch ships, Fugro Discovery and the Fugro Equator with 25 and 35 crew members are expected to join the GO Phoenix during the 12-day search before heading back to the Australian shore for refuel and resupply.
But according to Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, he is certain that the GO Phoenix and the other ships will not be in the water for so long because he believes that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will be found in couple of days.
Dolan said that the new equipment and latest data gathered will lead to the plane (he was also optimistic in April and May that the ships were getting signals from the aircraft’s black box, but that went nowhere.) Dolan stated:
“We’re cautiously optimistic; cautious because of all the technical and other challenges we’ve got, but optimistic because we’re confident in the analysis.It’s not clear how long that search will take. We would hope, obviously, to find the aircraft on the first day, but it could in fact take a year to search the entire area and weather conditions will have an impact.”
The searchers have mapped a new seabed in the search zone, about 1,100 miles west of Australia.
The maps were created using data produced by survey vessels that used ship-based sonar to scan about 110,000 square kilometers of ocean along this arc.
The 12-day $60 million search will cover a 23,000-square mile search area known as the “seventh arc,” which is an area where most experts believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 crashed after it ran out of fuel.
GO Phoenix has the same side-scan sonar technology that was used to detect the wreckage of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil.
Some scientists have stepped out to say the GO Phoenix will be searching in the wrong area and Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will never be found if they do not start looking 600 miles south the “seventh arc.”
