Godfrey and Lane have each attempted to locate the final location of the Malaysia Flight 370 wreckage. Godfrey’s efforts included studying the WSPR signals on the night of the plane’s disappearance. Radio amateurs are constantly sending test signals and recording signal data. They’ve been doing this for decades, and Godfrey said the data is very important because when a plane passes a radio signal, it disrupts the signal, and from that disruption you can track the plane’s presence.
“So I went back to March 8, 2014 and downloaded the entire signal,” Godfrey explains. There are thousands of them, and I started and followed the path of MH370 from the last known radar point. “My tracking results match Malaysia Flight 370 satellite data and Boeing data and oceanographic data.”
All these efforts, including the combination of various data sets previously held in separate domains, led Godfrey to the conclusion that the plane was located 1,500 kilometers west of Perth, Australia. “The crash site of MH370, defined by WSPR technology, is within a circle with a radius of 30 kilometers and centered at 29.128 degrees south and 99.934 degrees east,” says Godfrey. This area is located 1560 km west of Perth, Australia. “Only one more search of the area is needed to find MH370.”
Meanwhile, Lane says the aircraft will be found west of Perth along the longitude of Penang, Malaysia. Penang was the pilot’s hometown, and the plane had gone there in the hours after it went off course so that Ahmad Shah might see it one last time.
Lane believes the exact location of Malaysia Flight 370 and its planned flight path were deciphered from the pilot simulator data. Lin also points to a wealth of data he has reviewed since March 8, 2014 that supports his proposed location theory, such as a 300-kilometer trail of cloud anomalies associated with the final flight path of MH370. “It was the result of a pilot trying to hide by flying through the clouds, but instead left a long line of anomalies very visible in the satellite images,” he says.
Lin said there was only one person on that plane who could have plotted that secret flight path and landing site that was of personal importance to him, along the longitude of Penang.
According to Lin, the biggest challenge to finally finding the plane is that rigorous exploration of any new proposed location is usually dismissed by officials who are focused on continuing the search in the area known as the Seventh Arc.
As the ATSB documents explain, based on analysis of satellite data and aircraft yaw modeling, MH370 is thought to have run out of fuel and crashed in the Seventh Arc region; But Lynn says Arc Seven is not the right place because it’s based on the impossible notion that a plane that runs out of fuel would crash so fast, but not a single piece of debris has been seen in the area.
What will finding the plane reveal?
There is talk of further searches for MH370. Locating the wreckage will help solve many mysteries and important questions about the flight, perhaps the most important of which is who was piloting the plane when it disappeared.
“Until we find the body and the black box, we can’t solve this mystery,” Godfrey said. Finding the wreckage and examining the DNA samples from the skeletons inside the cabin will allow us to know who was in the cockpit. Only then can we learn from this event and make aviation safer in the future. “The wreckage is probably at least 3,000 to 4,000 meters under water and in a deep, dark and very cold environment, which is an ideal place to preserve evidence even after 10 years.”
