MH370 mystery closer than ever to finally being solved seven years on

Despite the most expensive search in aviation history, little trace has been found of MH370 Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 after it and its 239 passengers and crew went missing

New technology could help predict the final location of the airliner MH370, finally solving the seven-year search for the plane and its 239 passengers.

Little trace has ever been found of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 after it vanished over the Indian Ocean in 2014 on a flight between Kuala Lumpur an Beijing.

Theories for the disappearance have ranged from something as benign as technical failure to as sinister as mass murder-suicide by Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, the Malaysian captain.

The last search was carried out in 2018 by marine robotics company Ocean Infinity with unmanned underwater vehicles covering nearly 50,000 square miles but nothing was ever recovered.

However, according to a report in The Times newspaper, trials of a new technology capable of tracking historical data on radio signals bumping off aircraft fuselages could hold the key to finally locating the missing airliner.

The technology has proven to be so successful that its pioneers believe it may even be possible to chart MH370’s last minutes with a significantly increased precision, narrowing down the search area for investigators.

The British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey ran tests using a little-known online database set up in 2009, known as the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR), which records every interaction between aircraft in the sky and signals sent by ground-based radio transmitters.

He told The Times: “Imagine crossing a prairie with invisible tripwires crossing the whole area and going back and forth across the length and breadth.

“Each step you make you tread on particular tripwires and we can locate you at the intersection of the disturbed tripwires. We can track your path as you move across the prairie.”

He used the method to track the flight path of a New Zealand Air Force Orion aircraft that photographed debris on the surface of the ocean soon after MH370 disappeared.

While the debris was never recovered, it included a large panel resembling a Boeing 777 wing component, which many experts now suspect was part of MH370.

Ocean Infinity said it was aware of the trials and said: “We are always interested in resuming the search whether as a result of new information or new technology.”