MH370 could've taken 1000 possible flight paths

Photo/Vincent Thian

MH370 could have taken one of 1000 routes before probable crash, says search chief.

Six months after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 the man leading the operation to find it has admitted that there are 1000 possible flight paths it may have taken before crashing into the Indian Ocean.

Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is co-ordinating the search, said his team faced an intimidating and unprecedented challenge as it prepared to launch a one-year offshore search operation that could cost more than $50 million.

The only near certainty is that MH370 came down in a remote and inhospitable expanse of ocean that, at nearly 1.6 million sq km, is about six times the size of New Zealand.

Asked if he could guarantee that the plane's wreckage would be found, Dolan said: "I'd like to be that confident, but this is unprecedented.

"I don't want to create a false hope. But I don't want to write it off either, because we do think we have a reasonable prospect."

MH370 disappeared in the early hours of March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew on board the Boeing 777.

Despite a vast multinational search, no trace of the plane, or its black box, has been found. Now, six months after the biggest mystery in modern aviation history began, the search is about to recommence.

Three vessels will be used over the coming weeks. Simultaneously, an international team of experts will continue to analyse data obtained from the flight's satellite communications and flight simulations to try to narrow the priority search areas.

Investigators have for months been convinced that the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, somewhere along a 4000km curve known as the "seventh arc".

It is now considered a certainty that the plane crashed somewhere within a 1.6m sq km area around the seventh arc. But that area was far too big to be "practically searchable", Dolan admitted. A "range of priority areas" totalling around 100,000sq km had been agreed, he said.

At the weekend, Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minister, visited Malaysia and promised that the search for MH370 would last for "as long as it needs to scour the seabed".

The wreckage would only be found if the governments bankrolling the hugely expensive and time-consuming search stay the course, Dolan warned.

"There will come a point I would assume where the governments say, 'It is good money after bad and we no longer wish to continue'," he said. "But that is a matter for government. I am not making that decision."

Investigators are fairly sure that MH370 changed course as a result of a "deliberate act".