Research team: narrowed down MH370's possible location

(photo by CGTN)

An Australian research team claimed on Wednesday that they have narrowed down the possible location of the missing MH370 flight to just a fraction of the ocean search area previously explored by Australian, Malaysian and Chinese authorities.

Speaking at the Australian Marine Sciences Association (AMSA) national conference in Darwin, David Griffin, head of the team from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), said his team continued analyzing drift modelling data well after the ocean search had concluded, estimating that the plane went down along the "seventh arc."

Griffin said, "There's a strong current crossing across the seventh arc at (a latitude of) 35 degrees south, so we think the plane crashed into that current going to the northwest. That explains why debris didn't arrive in Australia."

In January, a joint statement from the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China said the ocean search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 would be "suspended indefinitely" until "credible new evidence" came to light.

MH370 was a scheduled passenger flight bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. It disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

During the ocean search operation which lasted for two years, authorities combed a 120,000-square-kilometer area of the Indian Ocean with no sign of the plane found.

According to Griffin, researchers buried themselves in satellite data to determine the exact sea level on the day the jet disappeared. They were then able to determine the direction in which ocean currents flowed.

"So that's the basis of how we know this current was flowing across the seventh arc at this time," Griffin said.

He said that CSIRO had passed the information on to authorities in charge of the search operation, but the government has not yet mentioned whether the search will resume.

(Source: Xinhua)