MH370 search 'should extend to remote valley in Kyrgyzstan' where a plume of smoke was reportedly seen at the time the plane would have crashed



NZ-based scientist Duncan Steel: Search should include Besh-Tash Valley

Plane 'most likely ended up much further south than current search area'



But he said consideration should be given to possible 'northern' flight path



A scientist has suggested the search for MH370 should be extended thousands of miles north to a Kyrgyzstan valley where a cloud of smoke was seen at about the time the plane could have crashed.

Space scientist and physicist Duncan Steel, who is based in Wellington, New Zealand, admitted that the search for the missing plane in the Indian Ocean appeared to be in the wrong place.

Suggesting that the Boeing 777 jet with 239 passengers and crew on board most likely ended up much further south, he also turned his attention to a valley in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

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A New Zealand scientist has suggested the search for missing MH370 should be extended to Besh-Tash Valley in Kyrgyzstan (pictured)

In an interview with the South East Asian news agency Bernama today, Mr Steel, who works with Nasa, suggested that some consideration should be given to the 'northern corridor' of the plane's possible flight path until the possibilities could be ruled out.

'For example, someone should go and take a look at the suggested crash site in the Besh-Tash Valley (Kyrgyzstan) which was indicated by a smoke plume just when the aircraft would have been expected to have crashed,' he said.

'In reality, that might be only a one-in-1,000 possibility, but why not go and take a look so as to exclude it?'

British-Australian Mr Steel, who is a visiting Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, said his own conclusions matched what has now been established by the authorities - that the sonic pings in the Indian Ocean were not from the MH370 emergency locator beacon.

Based on available information from the released raw data, he said, it was most likely that the aircraft headed south at near 500 knots and ended up much further south than the current search area.

He praised British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat for doing a good job of pulling out the data and analysing it, noting that the company's analysis of its satellite data was good.

'However, that does not mean I am sure they are correct because we have not been given vital information about the composition of the BFOs (Burst Frequency Offsets) and the modelling that Inmarsat performed.

'If we had that information, we could check on what was done to verify it or possibly find errors,' he said.

Mr Steel told MailOnline: ‘I have great misgivings about the present and recent search regions in the Indian Ocean. Whilst it seems very likely that the aircraft did go south into the Indian Ocean, as in all scientific analyses various assumptions need to be made.

‘It may well be that the Inmarsat engineers were correct in their deduction that it went south. But true scientists are always sceptical, and so we keep beavering away until such time as we convince ourselves that what has been stated is true.’

He told MailOnline that Chinese professor Dr Yaoqiu Kuang had looked at the last definite arc of possible locations of the aircraft, and considered possible crash locations in remote places.

The expert then found satellite imagery which showed an apparent smoke plume in the Besh-Tash Valley near Talas in Kyrgyzstan, a remote location at a relatively high, snow-covered altitude.

Dr Kuang then discovered other satellite imagery obtained just a few hours later showed no smoke plume, which would appear to be consistent with a possible aircraft crash.



Meanwhile former Malaysian Airlines chief pilot Captain Nik Ahmad Huzlan Nik Hussain said he had no reason to disbelief the analysis and calculations by Inmarsat and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.

Space scientist Duncan Steel said the search for MH370 appeared to be in the wrong place. Pictured are Malaysia Airline passenger jets are shown parked on the tarmac at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in March 2014

The Ocean Shield departed the previous search area in the Indian Ocean on Friday after it was revealed that the acoustic 'pings' whose data the search was based off were unlikely to have been coming from the plane's black-box. The new search for the aircraft is anticipated to begin in August and take up to one year