Missing Plane Update: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Likely in One Piece, Pilot Says

By Jack Phillips
December 1, 2014 Last Updated: December 1, 2014

Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is likely still in one piece and located approximately 4 miles beneath the surface ocean, claims a Boeing pilot in an editorial on Sunday.

Byron Bailey, who flew B777 planes–the same type as Flight 370–attempted to debunk theories about the passenger jet’s disappearance in March. He writes that the plane is “so automated that if something happened to the Flight Crew, or even if they left the cockpit shortly after takeoff,” the plane is able to hit its destination with a “preprogrammed computer Flight Profile.”

He notes that if the plane crashed, there would be debris floating around, which hasn’t been the case for Flight 370.

Writes Bailey for the Daily Telegraph, “I am bemused by the media coverage given to self proclaimed experts — people who have never flown a modern fly-by-wire computerised glass cockpit airliner and yet offer speculation as to what happened to MH370.”

Bailey also adds that the plane–which is said to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean–will be discovered eventually. 

“B777 is a very large aircraft and I personally believe that MH370 is intact and in 6000m (about 3.7 miles) of water. If we search long enough it will be found,” he writes.

“The ‘experts’ also stated that the aircraft might have flown slower and therefore flown further – hence more guessing as to the extent of the search area,” he adds, according to the Telegraph. He said those claims are “rubbish.”

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This map shows the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 search area. Over 6,900 square kilometres of the seafloor have been searched so far. (atsb.gov.au)
This map shows the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 search area. Over 6,900 square kilometres of the seafloor have been searched so far. (atsb.gov.au)

“For it to alter course and fly a different route as alleged would require the deliberate manual intervention of someone with considerable expertise of FMS protocols, which suggests a preplanned intention.”

Meanwhile, Australian officials are currently trying to figure out if and where debris from Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board, could wash ashore. 

There was initial speculation that the plane’s debris would wash up on the shores of Indonesia’s Western Sumatra four months after it disappeared.

“We are currently working … to see if we can get an updated drift model for a much wider area where there might be possibilities of debris washing ashore,” search coordinator Peter Foley said, reported Reuters.

FILE - In this March 18, 2014 photo, a young Malaysian boy prays, at an event for the missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370, at a shopping mall, in Petaling Jaya, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After a four-month hiatus, the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is about to resume in a desolate stretch of the Indian Ocean, with searchers lowering new equipment deep beneath the waves in a bid to finally solve one of the world's most perplexing aviation mysteries. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File)
In this March 18, 2014 photo, a young Malaysian boy prays, at an event for the missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File)

And Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan has also dismissed suggestions there was a disagreement among five groups involved in the Flight 370 investigation that led to delays in the search.

“There is no disagreement, just the deliberate application of differing analysis models,” Dolan said.

Nearly 7,000 square kilometers have been searched for far, the ATSB said in a recent update.

The groups agreed that the final resting spot for Flight 370 is in the “7th arc” that stretches about 1,000 kilometers from Exmouth, Western Australia.

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