A leading MH370 investigator has shared insights into what the final moments of MH370 may have looked like and why the flight “went dark” in its final moments.
Australian researcher Sergio Cavaiuolo has developed theories about the final moments of the flight that disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, arguing that eyewitnesses may have seen flames coming from the doomed flight.
The Boeing 777 vanished whilst en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Cavaiuolo believes the aircraft’s sudden turn back 40 minutes into the flight indicates a serious technical issue.
Sergio Cavaiuolo has shared what he thinks may have been the final moments of the flight
Getty/GB News
“It’s clear that the sudden turn back of the plane 40 minutes into the flight back over Malaysian – many pilots also have said that it’s indicative of some issue with the plane,” he told GB News.
He points to eyewitness accounts from above the South China Sea that reported flames coming from an aircraft.
“That kind of suggests that there was some sort of emergency incident with the plane,” Cavaiuolo said.
He theorises this may have compromised the aircraft’s underside, making landing difficult or impossible.
Cavaiuolo questions why the aircraft continued flying until it exhausted its fuel if this was a suicide mission.
“If this was a suicide mission, why wouldn’t you just fly the plane into somewhere and use massive explosion of fuel still in the plane,” he said.
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PICTURED: Visitors look at the wreckage believed to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during a remembrance event marking the 10th anniversary of its disappearanceREUTERSCavaiuolo believes the pilots were following emergency protocols after encountering problems.
He told GB News: “In emergencies, if there’s an electrical emergency, the pilots flick off all the circuit breakers and isolates the power to turn everything off, and then starts bringing everything on slowly to isolate where the problem is.”
The aerospace engineer said that this would explain why the plane appeared “dark” as it flew over Malaysia.
Cavaiuolo believes finding the wreckage is crucial to understanding what happened. “If we find the wreckage, I think there’s a good chance to see the black boxes,” he said.
He added: “There was almost immediately, in the days following, there were some stories of a gentleman on an oil rig seeing what was almost certainly MH370 with some flames underneath it, at the moment of the turn back in the South China Sea that was reported a bit later on.”
Despite being underwater for nearly 11 years, he remains optimistic about recovering data.
“The design of those pieces of equipment on the plane are quite robust. They’re sealed.”
It comes as Marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity‘s deep-water support vessel Armada 7806 arrived at a new search zone in the Indian Ocean, 1,200 miles off Perth, Australia, over the weekend.
Autonomous underwater vehicles were deployed from the ship within hours of arrival, and have since begun detailed scans of the seabed.