"I Calculated Where MH370 Crashed," Says British Engineer

He has been working on calculations for over a year to determine where the fatal flight MH370 has ended its course and he believes he has calculated where it crashed.

The British aeronautical engineer, Richard Godfrey told the BBC the Boeing 777 went down in the Indian Ocean about 2,000 kilometres west of Perth, Western Australia.

During a flight in March 2014, the plane vanished from radar carrying 239 passengers and crew, and it is one of the world’s biggest aviation mysteries.

Combining different data sets kept in separate domains, he says the complicated exercise demanded lateral thinking to bring all the data together.

“I had hoped we’ll be able to give closure to the next of kin as well as answers to the flying public and the aviation industry on exactly what happened with MH370 and how we prevent that in the future.”

To him, the data he put together points to one location and this new location is in the Southern Indian Ocean.

“No one had ever thought of combining Inmarsat satellite data, Boeing performance data, Oceanographic floating debris drift data, and WSPR net data before,” he said.

Mr Godfrey stated that work with a team has been ongoing for a year, and that “we’ve done quite a lot of testing of this new idea and we’ve come to the confidence to move forward.”

LOCATION

The exact point determined by data calculations is around 33 degrees south and 95 degrees east in the Indian Ocean, he says.

“An area as large as 120,000 sq km has been searched and that’s not looking for a needle in a haystack – that’s looking for something microscopic in a haystack. It’s very difficult to do,” he says.

He proposes a new search party should circle a radius of 40 nautical miles, far smaller than previous searches.

“The wreckage could be behind a cliff or in a canyon on the ocean floor,” he said. “And you need maybe three or four passes before you start to pick things up.” The wreckage could lie as far as 4,000 metres deep, he adds.

While more than thirty pieces of aircraft debris have been washed up on the beaches of the African coast and islands in the Indian Ocean, conspiracy theorists say these are not MH370 parts.

SEARCH

However, the funding of any search party is now in question. Who will fund the search? Hope is now on the Chinese government to show some interest in the search for MH370.

David Gleave, the chief investigator at Aviation Safety Consultants expects a new search to begin because there are new data as to where the crash site might be.

There were 122 Chinese nationals on board MH370. The aircraft departed from Kuala Lumpur but never reached its destination, Beijing.