AN AEROSPACE engineer claims he knows the exact location of the MH370 and believes the pilot was being FOLLOWED.
The missing aircraft vanished in 2014 with 239 people on board en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur – sparking the world’s biggest aviation mystery.
The jet vanished in 2014 with 239 people on board en route to Beijing[/caption]
Military intelligence revealed the plane had suddenly diverted from its destination of Beijing, China, to head west over the Indian Ocean.
Despite a widespread four-year search costing £150million, the wreckage has never been found.
Theories behind its disappearance included a terrorist hijacking, catastrophic malfunction or a mass murder-suicide by one of the pilots.
But British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey believes he has pinpointed the exact location of the tragic plane, claiming the pilot’s “strange” course suggests he was “being followed”.
Mr Godfrey has been using new tracking technology in a bid to solve one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history.
He believes the plane is about 1,200 miles west of Perth, Australia lying 4,000m deep at the base of what is known as the Broken Ridge – an underwater plateau with a volcano and ravines in the south-eastern Indian Ocean.
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The engineer used a new tracking system called Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR), which he said is like having a “bunch of tripwires that work in every direction over the horizon to the other side of the globe”.
Godfrey combined the new technology with satellite communications system data from the plane.
He says he found unusual patterns in the jet’s journey, including doing a 360 turn over the sea – which the expert believes supports the theory that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah took the plane off course on purpose.
“Everyone has assumed up until now there was a straight path, perhaps even on autopilot,” he told 60 Minutes.
“I believe there was an active pilot for the whole flight.”
According to Mr Godfrey’s findings, the aircraft entered an unusual holding pattern for around 20 minutes three hours into the flight.
He claims the temporary stall may show the pilot stopped to make contact with Malaysian authorities – despite officials saying contact with plane was lost 38 minutes after take off.
“It’s strange to me, if you’re trying to lose an aircraft in the most remote part of the Southern Indian Ocean, that you [would] enter a holding pattern,” Mr Godfrey added.
“He may have been communicating with the Malaysian government, he may have been checking whether he was being followed.
“He may have just simply wanted time to make up his mind, where he would go from here. I hope that if there was any contact with Malaysian authorities that after eight years now they’d be willing to divulge that.”
MISSING PLANE MYSTERY
The mystery behind MH370’s final journey is hidden in its black box, which records flight data and cockpit conversations. Only by recovering the aircraft’s wreckage will authorities finally learn the truth.
Since 2014, 33 pieces of debris have been found in six countries – including South Africa and Madagascar – which experts believe proves the plane plunged into the Indian Ocean.
The last full-scale search for MH370 in 2018 by US robotics company Ocean Infinity – using unmanned underwater vehicles – covered nearly 50,000 square miles yet nothing was recovered.
WSPR is now being used to accurately calculate the final location of the MH370 before it disappeared.
Extensive trials of new technology tracking historical data of radio signals bumping off planes have led experts to believe it could hone in on a more specific search area.
MH370 vanished from radar after taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and took an unexplained U-turn from its planned flight path.
Eight years on, some investigators believe the plane’s captain made a series of zig-zagging movements to throw off air traffic teams and evade radar systems.
British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey believes he has located the doomed Boeing 777 1,197 miles west of Perth, Western Australia[/caption]