Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 with 239 passengers onboard disappeared on March 8, 2014 on its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. But a little over a year of continued searching for any piece of wreckage, nothing has been turned up by authorities.
On March 10, new reports came out that a Malaysian Airlines-branded hand towel that was still in its packaging found in a beach by a couple 200 kilometers north of Perth in Western Australia could actually renew hopes for the still ongoing search for the missing plane on the Australian coast, reports The Independent.
It turns out that the small paper towel with the Malaysian Airlines branding on it was discovered by Kingsley and Vicki Miller of the nearby town called Cervantes while they were walking on the beach as early as July 2014. It was subsequently sent to Canberra for testing.
At that time, officials of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were already saying that it is unlikely that the towel might be of good use in finding the remains of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, some four months after its disappearance.
One year after the incident
Uncharacteristically, it was only on March 10 when it was reported on the media. Many believe that the branded hand towel story was just played out to sort of commemorate the first year of aviation’s greatest mystery.
Aviation experts believe that it was just too incredible for a plane that will be flying northward from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in China to just wander very far off course and end up somewhere in the south or subsequently have part of its wreckage found in the Australian coast, which was just way too south.
As expected, the investigators downplayed the significance of the branded hand towel discovery. The item would surely not help determine the cause of the accident or the exact location of the wreckage. As they see it, a single piece of the plane wreckage would be crucial for the ongoing search and investigation but unfortunately, nothing has been turned up so far.
Any news is good news
Given the lack of information and absence of solid progress on the greatest aviation mystery for more than 12 months already, any news is good news at this point. The discovery of the branded hand towel, though inconsequential, was reported to spark interest and hopes about the ill-fated Flight MH 370.
On Sunday, March 8, exactly one year after its disappearance, the first comprehensive report about Flight MH 370 was published which revealed that not a single clue on the jetliner was found despite extensive search operations.
The flight data for MH 370 also indicated that the plane may have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean.
Malaysian and Australian authorities have been leading the search efforts. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said during the weekend that the operation simply can’t go on forever but the searchers and investigators will continue to follow up the available leads.
The Australian PM told reporters on the anniversary of the plane’s disappearance that there is 60,000 square kilometres of ocean that is the subject of the ongoing search. And if it still turns out nothing, then there’s another 60,000 square kilometres more to look into, saying that the authorities are reasonably confident of finally finding the plane or its wreckage