The delayed recovery of Air France 447-nearly two years to locate the wreckage and flight recorders-was widely attributed to flawed early search assumptions. In a similar vein, more than 12 years of unsuccessful efforts to find MH370 reflect how initial analytical assumptions can steer a search away from the correct crash location.
New evidence in the MH370 Report.
1. The Smoking Gun. NASA satellite observations indicate that, on 8 March 2014, the highest near-surface carbon monoxide concentrations over the Indian Ocean aligned with an area on the 7th arc between 23°S and 24°S.
2. Updated drift analysis suggests that during the 2014 air and surface search, two substantial segments of the 7th arc between 23°S and 24°S were most likely missed. The ATSB’s subsequent assessments treated the 2014 surface search as having largely ruled out impact locations along the 7th arc north of 32.5°S.
3. Unpublished CSIRO drift model data show that impact sites between latitudes 23°S and 24°S had the highest probability of low-windage debris reaching South Africa (engine cowling and Mozambique right-wing flap) by December 2015. The data indicates that a crash location at 23.66°S is three times more probable than an impact point between 34°S and 35°S, Ocean Infinity's 2026 southern Indian Ocean search zone.
