According to Malaysian news publication Bernama, a satellite communication expert Zaaim Redha Abdul Rahman claims that MH370 is lying “largely intact” at the bottom of Indian Ocean.
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Scientists have also said barnacles on the flaperon could indicate how long it was in the water, and perhaps where it had been, information that could help to narrow the current massive search zone.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced last week that the wreckage was “conclusively” found to be from the missing aircraft, while the French prosecutor spoke of a “very strong supposition” that the wing part was from that Boeing 777.
Since MH370’s disappearance last March, the bulk of theories around the plane’s fate have centred on it nosediving into the Indian Ocean and breaking apart on impact.
With this in mind, he has suggested that the plane glided downwards after running out of fuel, landing softly on the southern Indian Ocean and slowly sank.
Rahman then noted that if the plane “had crashed with a really hard impact”, then immediately after this collision, dozens upon dozens of small pieces of debris would have emerged and then been floating on top of the sea. “Furthermore, the flaperon that was recovered (from Reunion Island) wouldn’t have been in one piece…we would have only seen bits and pieces of it”, he added.
Former US National Transportation Safety Board investigator Greg Feith told Bloomberg that since the piece was not “crushed”, experts could “deduce it was either a low-energy crash or a low-energy intentional ditching”. The Réunion debris was the first confirmed piece of MH370 wreckage.
Debris believed to be part of an aircraft has washed ashore on an uninhabited island in the Maldives.
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The search operation’s headquarters said in a statement yesterday that it was “in all probability” from MH370.
