The Boeing 777-200ER disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board and it remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries till today.
Despite help from many different governments and hundreds of people, nothing concrete was ever found. Searchers scoured more than 120,000 sq km of the southern Indian Ocean seafloor, mapping the floor area.
Possible debris was found by members of the public on the African coast and islands in the Indian Ocean.
Malaysia decided to end the search in 2017, much to the disappointment of the victims’ grieving relatives.
But in other corners of the world, some are continuing the hunt. One of them is Peter Foley.
Foley was the programme director for the international effort led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and has since retired.
He says he is “extraordinarily keen” to see another search started and for the plane to be found.
“I honestly believe the people who were so far from home in really appalling weather in the Indian Ocean are the absolute heroes of the search and we really worked incredibly hard to find that aircraft,” he told the British daily The Guardian.
“And it would be such a relief for everyone involved to see it is finally found and there were answers for the 239 families.
“Whether it’s pure dumb luck and a fisherman picks up a piece of debris on a long line or whether it’s an advance in technology that allows us to search in great detail large areas of the ocean floor or whether it’s a philanthropist who uses existing technology … it will be found.”
Besides Foley, there are other dedicated searchers, ranging from conspiracy theorists to well-intentioned amateurs and full-blown experts.
Ian MacLeod, an expert in shipwrecks, a diver of the deep, and a lover of ocean mysteries, also says it’s a matter of when, not if, the plane will be found.
He also explains why he wants to find the plane…to “unscramble the bullshit” surrounding its disappearance, he told the daily.
“What happens is there are people who do not accept lies and sniff them out at a thousand paces and who are passionate and persistent and clever.”
The Perth-based corrosion expert says the important thing is giving the families closure and the importance of the rituals of grief.
“People who lost their lives, that was not in vain, because their story lives on … that’s what motivates me.
“It’s why I give public talks about decay and preservation. Even after we’re dead, our stories only begin to be retold in another way, through the processes of decay. Every bit of decay has a story to tell,” MacLeod said.
Another sleuth is aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, who is part of the independent group of scientists hunting for the wreckage.
Speaking from Frankfurt in Germany, Godfrey said he was “quite focused”, spending hours every day for the past seven-and-a-half years on the search. He uses the weak signal propagation report (WSPR) network to track disturbances in radio waves. It is a global database of radio waves that are reflected or scattered when an aircraft crosses them.
Imagine trip wires forming a mesh across a prairie, he said.
“Each step you make you tread on particular tripwires and we can locate you … we can track your path as you move through the prairie.”
Those disturbances, mapped together with satellites pinging the plane, can help “fill in some of the gaps and help us to know more precisely where MH370 crashed”.
There are many others who share his passion. Wreck hunter Blaine Gibson is still searching for answers. Bob Ballard, who found the Titanic wreck in 1985, wants to help.
MH370 disappeared from air traffic control radar 38 minutes into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. Analysis of satellite and radar data showed it had kept flying for another seven hours.
In January 2018 the Malaysian government contracted marine robotics company Ocean Infinity to send in autonomous underwater vehicles in a “no-find, no-fee” deal. By May of that year, they had given up. But Ocean Infinity has said it is open to a new search.