Officials Now Suggest MH370 May Have Landed... Where Are All The Survivors?

(by Richard Shears, UK Daily Mail) -- The fruitless search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet might have to start all over again from scratch if no clues to its fate are found in coming days, it was claimed today.

The international team searching the Indian Ocean for the Boeing 777 are now considering the seemingly impossible scenario of the aircraft having 'landed' somewhere, instead of crashing in the southern Indian Ocean.

'We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back in the next few days,' sources within the International Investigation Team were quoted as telling the New Straits Times today.

While the sources have not suggested which country the aircraft might have landed - or crashed - in, the possibility that an entirely new search in a different area is in line with suggestions by the Mail weeks ago that alleged sightings of a low-flying aircraft could have located it in a different place than the ocean.

'The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible, as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370,' sources were quoted as telling the paper.

'However, the possibility of a specific country hiding the plane when more than 20 nations are searching for it, seems absurd,' said the sources.

But they admitted that it was difficult to determine if the plane had really ended in the Indian Ocean, despite calculations seeming to point to that direction.

The Mail reported early in the search that fishermen and villagers living in north east Malaysia had filed official statements with police claiming to have seen - or heard - a low-flying aircraft at the time when MH370 lost all contact with ground control.

Their descriptions of a 'very loud engine' and headlights like those switched on by an aircraft about to land at night suggested that the aircraft was flying to the west, across jungle, very fast, at a low altitude.

The sources told the government-controlled paper that it was difficult to determine if the plane had really ended in the Indian Ocean, although calculations pointed to that direction.

The Malaysian-led investigation team, along with experts from Inmarsat and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, had to rely on an Inmarsat communications satellite, which did not provide any definite details, including the aircraft's direction, altitude and speed.

One of the sources told the New Straits Times: 'A communications satellite is meant for communication...the name is self explanatory.

'The reason investigators were forced to adopt a new algorithm to calculate the last known location of MH370 was because there was no global positioning system following the aircraft as the transponder went off 45 minutes into the flight.'

The source added that the international team was looking at adding more ships and aircraft to the existing search area in the Indian Ocean - as well as widening the area because there were fears that searchers had been 'looking for the plane in the wrong place'.

'We can't focus on one place too long as the ocean is very big, although the search team has been following the leads received and analysed.

'It is by luck if we find the wreckage using the Bluefin-21 (the US-owned underwater search vehicle). 

'There is no physical evidence and we are totally depending on scientific calculations since day one, including the pings.'