FINDING MH370: New breakthrough could finally solve missing flight mystery | 60 Minutes Australia

is the biggest aviation mystery of all time the disappearance of malaysian airlines flight mh370 about to be solved well yes if you believe the man you're about to meet richard godfrey is no crackpot he's a respected british aerospace engineer and physicist who says he's found the doomed airliner if he's right he'll provide desperately needed answers for the families of the 239 passengers and crew who are aboard the boeing triple seven when it vanished eight years ago but knowing where it is isn't the end of the story richard also has to convince authorities to resume the search that's already cost hundreds of millions of dollars at any hour of the day or night thousands of amateur radio operators around the world enthusiasts like matthew ayers are talking to each other our qriz their conversations crisscross the globe in a tangle of invisible radio waves often there's a lot of background noise so you have to find the signal from the noise it might seem too incredible to be true but one man is now convinced these random ham radio signals have solved the eight-year-long mystery of the disappearance of malaysian airlines flight mh370 so richard you believe you know exactly where mh370 is that's correct yes so from the moment mh370 took off you have been able to track its every movement yeah from take off right to the end it's an enormous claim but richard godfrey has little doubt in fact the retired british aerospace engineer and physicist is so sure about the final location of the boeing triple seven he wants immediate action in my view there's no reason why we shouldn't be preparing a new search and planning for that so if we were to send a search party out there now they'd be able to find it it will only take one more search and we will find it among all the aviation experts working on the mh370 case richard godfrey is the first and only one to investigate the signals of the ham radio operators on the night the aircraft went missing the 8th of march 2014. the breakthrough came when he discovered the distinct disturbances the plane made to radio waves when it flew through them with that information not only was richard able to identify mh370 he could also track its precise flight path into the indian ocean i'm looking to try and detect anomalies in the signals reflected back from an aircraft you can follow that data and you can see where an aircraft may have disturbed the radio signals and you can pick up those disturbances have these radio enthusiasts across the globe inadvertently helped you find mh370 have they helped locate the missing wreckage indeed they have not surprisingly when news of richard's research was first made public there was skepticism but also hope especially for people like danika weeks let's join the dots if this isn't worth another search then i don't know what is danika's husband paul was one of the 239 passengers and crew on mh370 still back at that day it's just been such a long time with no closure no answers well that's the thing isn't it i mean all these unknowns that have been plaguing your life for eight years now does it keep you up at night still there's not a day i don't think about it look i promised paulie i'd bring him home i haven't fulfilled that promise yet it was just so haunting to be here for the past eight years danica weeks has bravely taken on a role she never wanted an advocate for the families who lost loved ones over that time her search for help and answers has never wavered even arranging an audience three years ago this is janekowicz with the then malaysian prime minister mahathir mohamad we intend to continue for as long as there is hope [Music] i left there thinking that yes we've made a mark here we are going to get the steps that we need and they're going to take action and then it was deathly silent and it was all just talk i mean the ocean's carrying a lot of secrets it is it's incredible that you know this long on we still don't know where they are now though for the first time in a long time richard godfrey has given danika a renewed sense of hope i've done my research on it and it looks so promising i when i you know re i get goosebumps because i feel this is it richard's work in identifying mh370 using the disturbances in the signals of the ham radio operators communicating with each other on the night the plane disappeared meant he was able to track where it was flying and he's confident in his analysis because the flight path he came up with mirrored the already known satellite tracking of mh370 however there was one difference richard's data produced much more precise detail about the plane's route into the indian ocean i mean this is quite extraordinary so these dots that we're seeing on this flight path here represent the signals that are being sent every two minutes that's right there are in total 160 of these detections so they've been disturbed by an aircraft in this case mh370 how can you be so sure that it was a plane that was mh370 that disturbed these radio frequencies it's very easy because out in the middle of the indian ocean there was just one other aircraft in in several hours that passed and that passed an hour's flying time away from mh370 so it's very easy then to discount you're picking up another aircraft and whether you're picking up mh370 so it can only be a plane that was picked up through this data yeah it has to be an aircraft at a certain altitude and not picking out ships on on the surface of the water or or things like that so why haven't we found it why aren't we looking and why haven't we provided answers to 239 families well why haven't we begs the question doesn't it well that's the question for government it's uh anyone involved in the search is feels the same way i do uh we need to be out there we need to be looking and we need and we need to find it the modern airliner could ever not be found is a frightening thought for most people for peter foley it simply defies belief for four years he was in charge of the australian transport safety bureau's search for the plane the most expensive in aviation history even today he remains obsessed about locating mh370 i was once described by my boss as a zealot and you know that connotes something that's a bit crazy but i i believe that in a real sense it was a good thing to be for mh370 and i wasn't the only one i think there was literally hundreds of zealots and people who were pretty desperate to find that aircraft despite the failure to find mh370 peter is proud of the efforts of his search team he's also cautiously optimistic about richard godfrey's work work that includes uncovering a very strange detail godfrey says could explain why mh370 went missing in the first place it does seem very strange when you're trying to lose an aircraft in the remotest part of the southern indian ocean that you enter a holding pattern for 20 minutes when malaysian airlines flight mh370 with 239 people on board vanished in the southern indian ocean eight years ago peter foley was put in charge of finding it the australian transport safety bureau operations chief failed but not for want of trying four years ago the 200 million dollar search was called off a decision the now retired peter says was plain wrong there's no one looking and no one has had a look since 2018 there's absolutely no reason why we're still sitting on our hands waiting for some credible new information leading to a specific location there's absolutely no reason why that aircraft couldn't be found [Music] peter's search for mh 370 was exhaustive two thousand kilometers west of perth it covered an enormous 120 000 square kilometers of the southern indian ocean but without luck now aerospace engineer richard godfrey thinks he can narrow the search to a much smaller area a mere 300 square kilometers it includes some area that's already been looked at as well as virgin seabed never before probed [Music] why would a search be any different this time why would we turn something up this time with this very difficult terrain um it is possible uh to to miss wreckage when you're going through a 120 000 square kilometers you you get one chance one pass of each point with 300 square kilometers you can afford in just a couple of weeks to go several passes from different angles so it's possible the plan may have been missed in previous searches in an area like this um it's possible having said that peter foley who now knows the southern indian ocean better than anyone says richard godfrey's work needs more scrutiny but it should certainly be taken seriously would that be a place to start richard's 300 square kilometers it was searched so i will point out that lots of his area was searched by the atsb back in 2014-15 and uh wide of that area was searched also by ocean infinity is his point but not all of it so there is still a window there's a small window yeah is there any merit to richard's work i think um there's certainly merit in exploring new avenues i think the jury's still out as far as richard's work's concerned and let's hope that he's onto something if richard godfrey is onto something his tracking of mh370's flight path not only pinpoints where the plane ended its journey it also reveals an extraordinary quirk much earlier in the flight everyone has assumed up until now that there was a a straight path perhaps even on autopilot perhaps even a ghost flight i think there was an active pilot for the whole whole flight and it certainly wasn't a straight line one theory about why the plane disappeared was that the malaysian pilot captain zahari ahmed shah had hijacked it in an act of political activism and it's a theory now given more weight by richard's more detailed flight path three hours into its journey mh370 enters an oval-shaped holding pattern for 20 minutes this point here is where the holding pattern takes place which is strange to me when you're trying to lose an aircraft in in the remotest part of the southern indian ocean that uh you enter a holding pattern for 20 minutes what do you think was happening in that time do you think that's when he may have been communicating with the malaysian government he may have been communicating with the malaysian government he may have been checking whether he was being followed he was may have just simply wanted time to make up his mind where i go from here i hope that if there was any contact with authorities in malaysia that after eight years now they would be willing to divulge that that someone captain zahari most likely killed all the passengers and deliberately flew mh370 into the middle of nowhere has long been debated when the plane first went missing peter foley and the atsb discounted the theory but time has changed peter's view so you think it's possible that the plane was piloted by an active captain well um it's possible that the plane was uh piloted at the end but we don't know for certain and we won't know until we find that debris we have to find the debris to know precisely what happened on board that aircraft it's the most likely scenario isn't it yeah by a wide margin mass mode of suicide um well if you put it like that yes yes it's chilling it's horrifying desperation more than anything else might be driving danika weeks but after eight years of waiting and with richard godfrey's help she thinks she's finally close to finding out what happened to her husband paul on flight mh370 i believe richard godfrey's findings are solid and so why wouldn't they search if they don't search then i'd be wondering why not because this is this is it i feel this is it you're that hopeful absolutely this is like the golden goose i believe in the years since the plane vanished danika and her two boys eleven-year-old lincoln and eight-year-old jack have had to live their lives [Music] it hasn't been easy but for denika meeting and then two years ago marrying john has brought comfort and joy the memory of paul is always present though he sat me down one day and he said if paulie walks through that front door i'll walk out the back door and i knew then that he got it it takes a lot of strength to say something like that john that's true it's hard to be that guy sometimes believe me it is it's hard but this days that you sort of wake up and go well is today going to be the day or what's it going to be like for dan and the boys today together we want that closure that we so very much deserve [Music] from his home in frankfurt germany richard godfrey has sent his research to the malaysian government [Music] as the owner of malaysian airlines it's the only authority that can approve a resumption of the search for the plane wreckage they say they're aware of godfrey's work and they're waiting for more information they're very polite and thank me for that they say they're very busy but i can't imagine they'd be too busy to find a plane with 239 people on board that's been missing now for eight years you would have thought that'd be their number one priority yeah this is very important however if it turns out for example that the airline or the the pilot was in any way responsible then they might be faced with a multi-million dollar claims so maybe they would prefer that this just quietly went away but peter foley's former employer the australian transport safety bureau is paying enormous attention to richard godfrey's research in fact it's so compelled the bureau has commissioned an independent review of its own data to assess if anything was missed in the original search other global experts are peer-reviewing richard's work with their results expected shortly if there are enough positive reviews it's hoped the atsb will lobby the malaysian government to reopen the search what is the willingness of the atsb to revisit some old data tell you it tells us that there's people in the bureau are still dead keen to find that aircraft and they should be right absolutely because they're people who like me uh want to have answers for families you know 239 families are still eight years later sitting out there with no answers and that was the promise that i made i promised as an individual i'd do anything i could to bring those people home and and yeah i think about it every day [Music] until now no one's been able to crack aviation's greatest mystery but richard godfrey is so certain he's right he'd be prepared to bet money on it if i had a couple of million despair uh i'd be wanting to go out into the indian ocean tomorrow and and look for it so you're that convinced i'm sure this mystery will be solved and hopefully it'll be solved later this year hello i'm sarah arbo thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on ninenow.com.eu and the ninenow app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 6,547,770

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, mh370, mystery, breakthrough, aviation, flight, airplane, malaysian airlines, air crash investigations, plane crash, bermuda triangle, malaysia, richard godfrey, indian ocean

Id: Jq-d4Kl8Xh4

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/TWeaKoR]

TL;DW:

• Retired British Aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey used HAM radiowaves to track MH370 for the entire flight from take off to crashing.
• By looking for distinct disturbances in the radiowaves reflected back from the aircraft he was able to plot the route.
• Signals were recorded every 2 minutes.
• He claims to know exactly where it has crashed.
• Before it went out to sea, the plane entered a holding pattern for 20 minutes approximately 200 km south west of Pulau.
• When other researchers have peer reviewed Mr Godfrey's work and if they confirm it, the hope is the ATSB will lobby the Malaysian government to re-open the search.

There's definitely a bit of hype for TV, with the way they are so certain that they've found it without actually going there and searching. However it does seem very promising; I hope they do go back out there and look for it.

[u/pozielei]

Realistically, even if they find the wreckage, after nearly a decade in salt water, under an enormous oceanic pressure there's a strong possibility the black boxes will be damaged beyond recovery. And what if the pilot in charge pulled the CVR breaker so the tape is empty anyway?

I'm all for finding the wreckage, but even if they do, i'm not sure we'll ever going to find out what really happened.

[u/Stone0fThor]

I just think we need to find the wreckage and get it over with. Plus we only have theories not any evidence in this case. So say to a grieving family that the dude they are grieving killed a bunch of people, and killed himself doing so all you want, but I just want to be sure hes guilty before I say anything about him.

[u/farcticox]

A 20min segment, nothing new really.

[u/nrtl-bwlitw]

From the intro: "Richard Godfrey is no crackpot."

• Promptly proceeds to demonstrate that he is, in fact, an absolute grade-A crackpot that would probably get laughed off Infowars.

/fin

[u/Iggsy81]

I posted this in the other thread about 60 minutes a couple days back but will put it here just as an FYI. In the "Extra Minutes' section on 9now, they had an interview with Richard de Crespigny about the likelihood of finding it and the state of the black boxes, etc. It is also on YouTube here: (5 mins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olDA7QR-vO0

There was additionally another 6 minute extra minutes section about the search which can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc_6ZJkYGdM

I know a lot of ppl on this subreddit dislike de Crespigny but thought i would share anyways. Both of these extra segments are on YouTube and 9now but of course you may need a VPN.

[u/ggregC]

Wow, what a crock of crap!! HF communications are the only that can have the distance to be in the path. An aircraft even the size of a 777 is incredibly small compared to the beam width of an HF signal over a path of several thousand miles let alone the fact that you need to have the aircraft in the path so the communications would have to be between India and Australia for example. Let's not forget the variations in signal strength due to variations in the ionosphere and cancellation of signals between ground and sky waves which are tens of orders of magnitude greater than any variations created by an aircraft.

Aircraft can more easily be detected once you get up to frequencies of say .5 GHZ and the aircraft is between two stations ideally located. Even then, the path is only open for a few seconds and the distance that can be achieved is limited by the altitude of the aircraft.
60 Minutes credibility dropped 1000 points in active trading with this article!

[u/hamradiodx]

WSPR can’t be used to find MH370. I covered that in a video here last year - https://youtu.be/KefDzzDAeew

It’s absurd how reporters/media/news outlets don’t even bother to find out the basics or ask independent views from those who actually understand WSPR and how it works.

[u/nrtl-bwlitw]

Please note that this is the Australian 60 Minutes, which does not share the original American version's standards of investigative journalism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes_(Australian_TV_program)#Controversies#Controversies)