A new £55million search for missing flight MH370 has been criticised by a leading expert who claims investigators are looking in the wrong place.
Malaysian authorities announced last week they would scour a new area in the southern Indian Ocean using robot submarines and underwater microphones.
But American journalist Jeff Wise, who has dedicated years to solving aviation’s biggest mystery, believes this latest effort is misguided.
Wise has made it his life’s mission to uncover what happened to the Malaysian Airlines flight after it vanished with 239 people on board in March 2014.
A new £55 million search for missing flight MH370 has been criticised by a leading expert who claims investigators are looking in the wrong place
Reuters/Wikimedia Commons
The Boeing 777 disappeared from radar at 1.21 am while crossing into Vietnamese airspace, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur Airport bound for Beijing.
The disappearance sparked the largest search in aviation history, with the wreckage presumed to have crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean.
However, despite multiple searches, no definitive trace of the aircraft has been found.
According to Wise, the aircraft may have been flown north into Kazakhstan rather than south as widely believed.
He claims a sophisticated hijacking by Russian agents was responsible, with the plane potentially landing at one of three airports: Kuqa Quici in China, or Kyzlorda and Almaty in Kazakhstan.
The official narrative suggests MH370 made a U-turn, flying across Malaysia and the Andaman Sea, with military radar and satellite data from British company Immasat indicating it continued towards the Southern Indian Ocean.
But Wise believes there’s a reason why multiple searches of the South Indian Ocean have proved fruitless.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
According to Wise, the aircraft may have been flown north into Kazakhstan rather than south as widely believed
GB News
The search for the MH370 has been ongoing for over 10 years
GETTY
“I very early thought it went north based on almost nothing. But just my intuition has always been that,” he told The Sun.
His theory proved controversial, leading to his removal from the MH370 independent group of experts working to solve the mystery.
Wise argues there’s a fundamental contradiction in the official theory about the plane’s fate.
“If the plane went south it was a suicide mission. Whoever did this their ultimate goal was to die and it also became clear, really early that this was an elaborate, sophisticated, motivated action,” he added.
He also questions why someone would go to such lengths simply to end their life.
When asked why no country detected the aircraft crossing their airspace heading north, Wise explained: “A lot of countries, even if they have radar in certain areas, don’t always have it turned on.”
His theory gained some credibility from a 2014 Federal Aviation Association report revealing Boeing 777s were vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
The disappearance sparked the largest search in aviation history
Getty
More than 30 pieces of suspected aircraft debris have been collected along the along the coast of Africa and across the Indian OceanREUTERSThe report warned hackers could “wreak havoc” and alter aircraft configurations through software manipulation.
However, the discovery of confirmed MH370 debris in the Southern Indian Ocean poses a significant challenge to Wise’s northern route theory.
Malaysia’s transport minister Anthony Loke said the government has a “responsibility and obligation” to those who lost loved ones in the 2014 disaster.
“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin. We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families,” Loke said.
The new search will be conducted by Ocean Infinity, an underwater robotics company.
The firm stands to receive £55million if it successfully locates new wreckage of the jet.
Ocean Infinity previously led the last search for MH370, which concluded in 2018 without success.
The company has already submitted its proposal for the new hunt to Malaysian authorities.
This latest effort marks a renewed push to solve one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, more than a decade after the aircraft’s disappearance.