While search efforts continue, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak made an official announcement during a press conference on Monday that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended in a “remote location” of the Southern Indian Ocean.
“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” PM Razak told the press.
Search crews have been scanning the ocean for the last 17 days trying to find any clues on what caused the plane’s disappearance. British satellite maker Inmarsat played an integral part in using new technology to find any possible wreckage.
“[Inmarsat] has been performing calculations on the data using type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort and they have been able to shed more light on MH370. Based on the new analysis, Inmarsat and the (British) Accidents Investigation Branch have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that it’s last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth,” Razak added.
A Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 search plane claims they saw several “white objects” floating in the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles from Perth on Monday. A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft was sent to investigate the Chinese reports, but were unable to “relocate the reported objects.”
In addition, a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion claims to have located two large objects in the Southern Indian Ocean, described as “a grey or green circular object and the second an orange rectangular object.” The objects were seen in the same search area as the Chinese ones, about 1,500 miles off the west coast of Australia.
On Sunday, new satellite data from the French came to fruition, showing several objects 575 miles north of the reported Chinese and Australian debris locations. One image captured by the satellite shows an object that’s 72 feet by 43 feet. It has yet to be found by naval crews.
Another object found appears to be a wooden pallet, which the plane was transporting at the time of the disappearance, surrounded by several straps of different lengths and colors. That pallet was spotted by a search plane, but searchers were reportedly unable to capture a photo of it.
According to French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal, satellite radar echos “identified some debris that could be from the Malaysian Airlines plane.” He added that these echos “are not images with a definition like a photograph, but they do allow us to identify the nature of an object and to localize it.”
It is unknown what cause Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to go missing on March 8 with 239 people on board, but authorities are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism, or mental health issues from someone on the flight.
