The search area for MH370 covers almost 60,000sq km.
AS THE underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 nears its end, officials may have to confront the idea that its disappearance was deliberate.
There is only 10 weeks until the search for the plane is expected to end after a year-long mission. If officials fail to find the wreckage, it throws up the possibility that a rogue pilot was controlling the aircraft at the end.
According to The Times, Australian officials are preparing to change their theory of what actually happened before it disappeared.
The 60,000sq km search area, which is almost the size of England, was calculated on the assumption that the plane was a “ghost flight” and that its pilots were either incapacitated or dead at the time it crashed. In this scenario the aircraft flew on autopilot until its fuel ran out and it crashed into the Indian Ocean.
But if the plane is not found in this area, it may suggest someone was controlling the flight at the end and managed to glide the aircraft for up to 160km, beyond the bounds of the search area. The “rogue pilot” theory suddenly comes back into play.
“We’re not at the point yet, but sooner or later we will be — and we will have to explain to governments what the alternative is,” Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan told The Times.
“In a few months time, if we haven’t found it (the plane), then we’ll have to be contemplating that one of the much less likely scenarios ends up being more prominent. Which is that there were control inputs into that aircraft at the end of its flight.”
The rogue pilot theory includes the possibility that a third individual took control of the flight but it would not change the route that officials believe the plane took, which is backed up by satellite and radar data.
Last year a Boeing 777 flaperon found on Reunion Island was confirmed as being from the missing plane.
Unfortunately, if the plane is not found in the next few months, the world may never know what happened to flight MH370. Australia, Malaysia and China agreed last year to end the search if they reached the end of the zone without finding the plane.
101 East investigates the theories behind one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries.
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