News

Private Company: We've Found Flight 370

by Caitlin Mahon

GeoResonance, a private Australian company, is claiming they've located commercial airline wreckage, which may be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — which disappeared nearly two months ago. But key researchers hunting for the plane say it's not possible, for one very important reason: GeoResonance found wreckage on the sea floor of the Bay of Bengal. That location just so happens to be thousands of miles away from the southern Indian Ocean, which is where pulse signals from the flight's black box have been detected.

GeoResonance released a statement to CBS News on Tuesday, noting they used technology that is capable of scanning large areas of water for various metals, such as copper, aluminum, steel alloys, and titanium, which are materials used to make a Boeing 777. The same technology is often used for mining for minerals. The company found varying data in two multi-spectral images. One image was taken on March 5, the other was taken on March 10, and the plane went missing on March 8. While GeoResonance can't say it's Flight 370 for sure, they believe it's worth an investigation.

According to CBS News, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's Acting Minister of Transport, released a statement on Tuesday that the Malaysian government is "working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information." Plus, one U.S. official told CBS News that they are "very skeptical" of GeoResonance's discovery, and it likely wouldn't amount to anything.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's communication was cut off on March 8, just northwest of Manila, while traveling to Vietnam. Key investigators think the plane made a 180-degree turn and began heading toward the Indian Ocean. At this point in the game, with numerous false leads, officials involved in the search are expanding the previous 1,000 mile search area and ending all air search.