Tech advances will lead to MH370 discovery—Malaysia Airlines

(FILES) This file picture taken on March 13, 2014 shows passengers watching Malaysia Airlines planes on the tarmac at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang. Malaysia Airlines cautioned on July 30, 2015 that it was “premature” to speculate on whether aircraft wreckage found in the Indian Ocean was from missing flight MH370, as authorities scrambled to verify the origin of the debris. The two-meter (six-foot) long piece of wreckage, possibly from a wing part known as a flaperon, was found on a beach on the French island of La Reunion. AFP PHOTO / FILES / MOHD RASFAN

The resting place of missing flight MH370 will eventually be found but it will require advances in science and technology, including artificial intelligence, Malaysia Airlines’ chief said Tuesday.

No trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, was found during a lengthy deep sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, with the search called off in January.

“There will be advances in science that will help locate the wreckage eventually,” the Malaysian carrier’s chief executive Peter Bellew told The Australian newspaper, adding the discovery “might unlock closure for some people”.

Bellew, in Sydney for an aviation summit, said the advances could come through “the availability of artificial intelligence that’s coming on stream”, high-capacity computing power and university research.

He did not give further details about what specific research could lead to a breakthrough, but added that private efforts to locate the plane could also play a part.

So far, three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-meter wing part known as a flaperon.

“(There are people) who are spending a lot of their own resources at the moment and co-ordinating with authorities… I do think somebody will make a breakthrough somewhere around this, or a combination of people,” Bellew said.

“It will create a situation where there will be some chance of pinpointing the location of where the aircraft may well be.”

Australia’s national science body CSIRO said in April that MH370 was “most likely” lying north of the former search zone — a 120,000 square kilometer (46,000 square mile) area largely defined through satellite “pings” and the flight’s estimated fuel load.

But Transport Minister Darren Chester has said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerges.

Australia last month released to the public detailed maps showing the topography of the sea floor where the search took place, with a second set of data to be released in mid-2018.