Quest for MH370 answers far from over as Boeing predicted to take over search

While the current search for MH370 led by Australia is winding down the quest for answers is far from over. Photo / AP

A former US crash investigator believes that Boeing will take the lead in a new privately funded search for missing MH370.

Aviation expert John Goglia, a safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said while the current search led by Australia is winding down the quest for answers is far from over.

"The search will continue ... but it will be a privately run," he said with most likely Boeing taking the lead.

Independent MH370 investigator Blaine Alan Gibson with debris discovered on Riake Beach, Madagascar. Photo / Facebook

"It'll be smaller and more focused but that's probably better."

Boeing was not available for comment yesterday.

It has long been considered that a private individual or company would take-over the search for MH370.

In 2015, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen found the wreck of the long-lost World War II Japanese super battleship Musashi near the Philippines.

The philanthropist spent eight years searching for the Musashi which was sunk in the Battle for Leyte Gulf on October 24, 1944.

Other privately funded expeditions have found the Titanic, German battleship Bismarck, the pride of the Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the HMS Hood.

Last month Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester dampened hopes of extending the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to a new 25,000 square/km search zone identified by international experts as having a high probability of containing the wreckage.

Mr Chester's view - and that of China and Malaysia - is that the new search area is not specific enough and put him at odds with the experts' conclusion that the location north-east of the existing search zone needs investigating.

The expert findings detailed in "First Principles Review", issued last month by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is the result of findings from a three-day meeting held in Canberra in early November by parties involved in the search for the missing Boeing 777.

Blaine Gibson has found wreckage from the Malaysian Airlines plane MH370 that disappeared 08 March 2014. Photo / Facebook

"The participants of the First Principles Review were in agreement on the need to search an additional area representing approximately 25,000 sq. km," the report concluded.

"Based on the analysis to date, completion of this area would exhaust all prospective areas for the presence of MH370."

The new area identified as a potential crash site adjoins an area searched in 2014 and takes into account additional information from a CSIRO ocean drift study.

It is not part of part of the 120,000 sq. km swathe of Indian Ocean swept for more than two years and in which no sign of the aircraft debris field has been found.

The new area - between latitudes 32.5 degrees south and 36 degrees south - was based on "comprehensive satellite data analysis and updated with the latest search results and the CSIRO drift analysis," the report said.

It is slightly narrower than the first zone due to revised calculations that the aircraft crashed closer to the seventh arc, the curved line determined by the last satellite handshake between the aircraft and the plane.

The three-day First Principles Review was attended by Australian and international experts in data processing, satellite communications, accident investigation, aircraft performance, flight operations, sonar data, acoustic data and oceanography.

It aimed to reassess and validate existing evidence and to consider any new analysis that may assist in identifying the location of MH370, which crashed in 2014 while en-route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A key to the finding was additional information not available when the first search area was defined.

More than 20 items of debris have been recovered and identified as likely to be, almost certainly or definitely originating from MH370, including parts the wing.