Investigators fear missing flight MH370 may be at bottom of Indian Ocean, says report
Investigators involved in the search for the missing flight MH370 reportedly now fear the aircraft is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, a report in the Herald Sun said.
This followed earlier reports by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) today that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites in the space of five hours after it disappeared.
The WSJ report said that MH370 sent a series of “pings” about its speed and altitude, the paper quoted people briefed on the matter as saying.
It also reported that the final ping was sent from over the ocean, at a “normal” cruising altitude, five hours after MH370 took off.
“There is probably a significant likelihood” that the aircraft is now on the bottom of the Indian Ocean a US official told CNN this afternoon.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua had reported that Chinese researchers detected a "seafloor event" near the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam, an area suspected to be linked to the missing MH370 jetliner.
The event had occurred about one-and-a-half hours after the plane's last definitive sighting on civilian radar, a research group on seismology and physics from the University of Science and Technology of China was quoted as saying.
"The seafloor event could have been caused by the plane possibly plunging into the sea," the researchers had told Xinhua.
The area is 116km northeast from where contact with MH370 was lost and is considered a non-seismic region. – March 14, 2014.
