Five months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished, search teams could shift their hunt southward.
New analysis of a satellite phone call to the Boeing 777 shows the disappeared jet may have been flying further south than previously thought.
The jet carrying 239 people disappeared March 8 after veering off its course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Experts have said they believed it crashed about 1,100 miles off Australia’s west coast. No wreckage has been found.
But new data could shift the search area. Airline officials on the ground attempted to call the plane just after Flight 370 disappeared from radar. Another look into that failed call “suggests to us that the aircraft might have turned south a little earlier than we had previously expected,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau officials will meet with international experts next week to decide whether the 23,000-square mile search area should be moved south based on the call.
Investigators have long been aware of the phone calls, but experts have been slow to develop methods to analyze the data. A similar analysis of data from the plane’s engine helped investigators define the current search area.
A new phase of of the monthslong hunt will begin next month, when a Dutch contractor will send three ships towing underwater vehicles to the ocean.
The video-enabled, sonar-equipped vessels will hunt for wreckage and the plane’s black box — a critical piece of the investigation, necessary to learn what exactly happened to the plane.
While Malaysia has overall responsibility for the crash investigation, Australia has taken charged of the search and rescue duties.
With News Wire Services
