Flight MH370 Update: Search Close To Solving Missing Malaysian Airline Mystery, Captain Says

Many aviation experts now believe investigators might at last be close to discovering the whereabouts of the missing Malaysian airliner that disappeared more than a year ago, the West Australian of Perth reported Monday. Capt. Simon Hardy, whose theories on MH370 have repeatedly been cited by media, said he believed there was now enough information to pinpoint where the airplane probably went down. He has also offered his own coordinate estimates.

“For those seeking a reason to be optimistic following a discouraging 20 months of searching the ocean without a result, there is definite cause for renewed hope this time,” said David Learmount, an editor for Flightglobal, a popular aviation magazine that first published Hardy’s calculations.

Hardy is a senior British pilot, and in the past, the Australian Transport Safety Board has characterized his work as “credible.” The panel also confirmed that it's been in communication with Hardy over the investigation, as the Huffington Post reported earlier this year.

The search for the missing airliner has scanned some 70,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean floor. The airliner went missing in March 2014, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The 239 passengers and crew are presumed dead, as the Boeing 777 seems to have crashed in the ocean. Despite a massive, multinational search, little evidence has turned up pointing toward what happened to the missing Malaysia airliner. The search for the missing plane has cost Malaysia an estimated $75 million.

While there have been numerous reports of debris, only part of a wing that washed ashore on Reunion Island, a French territory in the western Indian Ocean, has been confirmed to have been part of the plane. Various theories have been proposed for what may have happened, and in the past, Hardy has suggested that the pilot may have intentionally crashed the plane into the ocean. The pilot’s family denounced the claim.