It was almost a year ago, on March 8, 2014, that flight MH370 vanished from radar en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. As the anniversary approaches, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia are preparing to try out a new way to track airplanes that would use current technology but would enable the system to track a jet’s position every 15 minutes, instead of the current norm of 30 to 40 minutes. Also, Malaysian officials have said they will release an interim statement detailing the progress of their investigation into the flight’s disappearance sometime in the next week, but according to CNN, experts don’t expect the report will contain any new information.
Ships’ crews are still searching in the Indian Ocean, using remote-controlled submersible scanners, hoping to find some sign of wreckage. The high-priority search area is based on analysis of satellite signals received from the airplane on its final flight. That search is expected to be complete by May, and if nothing is found, it’s not clear what the next steps would be. “We clearly cannot keep searching forever, but we want to do everything that’s reasonably possible to locate the aircraft,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told Reuters on Sunday. His office later issued a statement that Truss didn’t mean to imply the search would be abandoned, but “discussions will be had between Australia, Malaysia, China and potentially others on the next steps.” The Boeing 777 carried 239 people on the final flight.
In today’s AVweb Insider blog, guest blogger Les Abend — a 777 captain — offers his analysis of what might have happened aboard the missing airplane.
