New theory emerges in hunt for MH370 as searchers admit they may have been looking in the wrong place
Searchers leading the underwater hunt for the Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane believe it may have glided into the sea rather than dived in the final moments, meaning they have been scouring the wrong patch of ocean for two years.
The airliner disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Specialist search teams from Dutch company Fugro have spent two years combing an area roughly the size of Greece in the southern Indian ocean off the western coast of Australia.
The search of the 120,000 square kilometre patch is expected to end in three months and could be called off altogether following a meeting with Malaysian, Chinese and Australian authorities.
"If it's not there, it means it's somewhere else," Fugro project director Paul Kennedy said.
Did the plane glide rather than dive?
Although Kennedy has not ruled out the possibility that the searchers have failed to spot the plane in the area already covered, he says a more likely option is that the plane glided down - meaning the pilots were still in control at the end - and made it beyond the area marked out by calculations from satellite images.
"If it was manned it could glide for a long way," Kennedy said. "You could glide it for further than our search area is, so I believe the logical conclusion will be well maybe that is the other scenario."
Fugro's controlled glide hypothesis is the first time officials have given any support to contested theories that someone was in control during the flight's final moments.
Since the crash there have been competing theories over whether one, both or no pilots were in control, whether it was hijacked - or whether all aboard perished and the plane was not controlled at all when it hit the water.
Investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the plane's transponder before diverting it thousands of miles.