On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously vanished from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, en route to Beijing.
The Boeing 777, along with its passengers, has been unaccounted for since, with only a few aircraft fragments discovered over the past decade.
Now, an ambitious team of researchers has devised a novel method they hope will determine the aircraft’s possible resting place: releasing plane parts into the Indian Ocean.
The initiative, named the Finding MH370 Project, has been established precisely to track down the elusive remnants of the ill-fated Boeing 777.
Contrary to previous attempts involving sonar drones and extensive seafloor searches, the team plans to release parts from a Boeing 777 into the ocean and monitor their drift, with the hope of gathering critical intelligence about the aircraft’s probable location.
The project is spearheaded by Jeff Wise, a science journalist and private pilot, renowned for his work on the MH370 case.
Wise, who has authored books, hosted podcasts, and participated in documentaries about the plane’s disappearance, aims to uncover the drift patterns of the parts of MH370 that have already washed up ashore.
Fragments from the aircraft initially appeared on a shoreline in Saint-Denis, Reunion Island, in July 2015.
Scientists have been studying their drift since then, attempting to backtrack where in the Indian Ocean they may have originated.
Experimentation involving the sea previously included dropping wing components to estimate their flotation distance.
Still, Wise and his team felt these efforts were insufficiently comprehensive.
The project involves releasing a Boeing 777 flaperon—equipped with sensors—into the Indian Ocean.
Over 18 months, Wise’s team will track the flaperon’s movements and study the growth of ocean organisms, such as barnacles, on its surface.
This data will help them make comparisons with the MH370 fragments found previously at sea.
Marine organisms like barnacles provide key information regarding the drift paths of these remnants.
Curiously, the barnacles found on the MH370 pieces were unusually young, indicating a significant gap between the plane’s disappearance and its fragments entering the water.
Moreover, these organisms covered the entire surface of the flaperon—including regions above the water line—an occurrence unheard of for barnacles.
The Finding MH370 Project aims to resolve these anomalies by using a real 777 flaperon and following it through a simulated ocean journey.
Through careful observation and data collection, the researchers hope to clarify how barnacles grew on a flaperon and to discern the object’s marine entry point.
While the initiative is not yet operational due to pending funding, it holds promise as a potential breakthrough in solving the lingering mystery of MH370.
Its successful execution could also accompany other international efforts to finally uncover the plane’s veil of secrecy.