Now a team of mathematicians claims the Boeing 777 vanished without a trace because it plunged into the Indian Ocean at a 90-degree angle.
The perfect nosedive kept the aircraft intact and explains why no debris or oil has been found since it disappeared in March last year with 239 people on board, the researchers say.
Texas A&M University at Qatar mathematician Goong Chen, who led the forensic computer simulations, says the supporting evidence is strong.
“The true final moments of MH370 are likely to remain a mystery until someday when its black box is finally recovered and decoded,” Chen says.
“But forensics strongly supports that MH370 plunged into the ocean in a nosedive.”
The researchers used applied mathematics to test five different landing scenarios.
These included gliding water entry, a skilful manoeuvre performed by Captain Chesley Sullenberger when he landed a US Airways flight on the Hudson River in New York in 2009.
However this scenario was discounted with MH370 because “ditching a large airplane on the open Indian Ocean generally would involve waves of height several meters or more, easily causing breakup and the leak of debris.”
According to researchers’ fluid dynamics simulations, a vertical water entry would have caused the least resistance. MH370 would have remained intact before sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
The research was published in the April 2015 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
The search for the ill-fated aircraft has covered more than 48,000 square kilometres of the sea floor, Subsea World News reported.
At the request of the Malaysian Government, Australia has accepted responsibility for the search, with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau leading the underwater mission.
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