A new report on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 says that the aircraft was in a "high and increasing rate of descent" with no one in control during its last satellite communications, and it had plunged towards the sea in its final moments at a speed of up to 25,000 ft per minute, CNN reported.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, in its report released on Wednesday, also suggests that the right outboard wing flap, which was found on Pemba island off the coast of Tanzania, did not get detached from the fuselage at the time of the crash, according to The Guardian. Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said that the report refuted theories that a pilot had been in control of the plane at the time of the crash. "The really important news in this report is that the flap found in Tanzania was stowed. Therefore, there was no way this airplane was being flown by anyone," he said.
The Australian body is holding a three-day meeting in Canberra with other aviation experts, during which they will try to reach a decision on whether to move their search for the missing flight further north. The ATSB has been leading the operation to locate the MH370 plane in a 1.2 lakh sqkm area in the southern Indian ocean. The search in the remaining 10,000 sqkm was due to be completed next year.
There have been growing calls from experts to have the hunt shifted upwards as the likelihood of finding the wreckage in the current limits of their search seems slim. The ATSB report highlighted its drift analysis, noting the times and locations at which MH370 debris has been found to prove that the flight most likely crashed "within the current search area, or further north".
Investigators now have 20 pieces of debris to work with, seven of which were proven to be part of the Boeing aircraft. They were all found in countries along the western Indian Ocean, including Rodrigues, Madagascar, Mauritius and Réunion Island.
At the meeting, they aim to reach a consensus on expanding the search area, a proposal that Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester will pitch to his Malaysian and Chinese counterparts. The three ministers had earlier agreed to end the search for the ill-fated flight after the hunt in the current area is completed. Chester said the summit will review "all the available data and analysis associated with the search to date…inform the remainder of the search effort, and develop guidance for any future search operations".
The two-year-long search for the plane has not yielded much. The Boeing 777 jet was flying with 239 people on board from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it was went missing on March 8, 2014.
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