PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - An Australian exploration company has claimed that it has found wreckage possibly linked to missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370, six weeks after it left Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing on March 8
Adelaide-based GeoResonance said on Monday that it had begun its own search for the missing Boeing 777 on March 10 and that it has detected possible wreckage in the Bay of Bengal, 5000km away from the current search location in the southern Indian Ocean off Perth.
GeoResonance's search covered 2,000,000 sq km of the possible crash zone, using images obtained from satellites and aircraft, with company scientists focusing their efforts north of MH370's last known location, using over 20 technologies to analyse the data including a nuclear reactor.
According to company spokesperson David Pope, "the technology that we use was originally designed to find nuclear warheads, submarines. Our team in the Ukraine decided we should try and help".
He added that GeoResonance had compared their findings with images taken on March 5, three days before MH370 was reported missing - and they did not find what they had detected at that spot.
"The wreckage wasn't there prior to the disappearance of MH370. We're not trying to say that it definitely is MH370; however it is a lead we feel should be followed up," said Mr Pope.
Another GeoResonance spokesperson Pavel Kursa added that several elements found in commercial airliners was detected at the Bay of Bengal spot.
"We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777 … these are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials," said Mr Kursa in a statement reported by Australian news channel 7News.
MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.
A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak then announced on March 24 - 17 days after the disappearance of the aircraft - that Flight MH370 had "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".
