Wrong search area for MH370?

Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew onboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Searchers led by engineering group Fugro have been combing an area roughly the size of Greece for two years. 

That search, over 120,000 square kilometres of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia, is expected to end in three months and could be called off after that following a meeting of key countries Malaysia, China and Australia on Friday. 

The three countries agreed in April 2015 that should the aircraft not be located within the search area, and in the absence of any new credible evidence, the search area would not be extended. So far, nothing has been found. “If it’s not there, it means it’s somewhere else,” said Fugro project director Paul Kennedy. 

Doubts that the search teams are looking in the right place will likely fuel calls for all data to be made publicly available so that academics and rival companies can pursue an “open source” solution — a collaborative answer to the airline industry’s greatest mystery.