Australia reviews search after ‘important new information’ from satellite data reveals plane was in high and increasing rate of descent in final moments

Australia is mounting a case for a new search effort for MH370 bolstered by “important new information” about what investigators believe to have happened at the end of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.

A new report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) suggests the plane was in a “high and increasing rate of descent” at the time of its final satellite communications, and that the right outboard wing flap found on Pemba island was not deployed at the time of the crash.

What happened to MH370? Malaysia Airlines flight 370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished on 8 March 2014. There was no trace of the plane until a flaperon washed up on Réunion in the Indian Ocean in 2015. Several pieces of debris found around east and south Africa have since been assessed to be from the missing aircraft. A seabed search led by Australia, backed by Malaysia and China, is due to continue until early 2017. Theories – all unproven – have ranged from crew involvement or hijacking to onboard fire or catastrophic technical failure.

Both are consistent with an uncontrolled plane plummeting into the ocean in the final moments of a flight in which it was not configured for a landing or ditching.

The future of the hunt for MH370 hinges on whether this constitutes credible new evidence about the location of the wreck. A spokesman for the ATSB declined to say.

But the ATSB is hosting a three-day meeting with other experts from Wednesday to attempt to finalise a proposal to shift the search for the missing plane further north.

The ATSB has been leading the hunt for MH370 in a 120,000 sq km area of the southern Indian ocean, with the remaining 10,000 sq km due to be completed early next year.

As that venture nears completion, the likelihood of finding the wreckage has dwindled, and there have been calls from experts for the search effort to be shifted further north – calls to which the ATSB has now given credence.

The report released on Wednesday pointed to drift analysis and the times and locations at which debris has been found as evidence that the crash site was likely to be “within the current search area, or further north”.



Simulations have also shown some northernmost areas “to be less likely” to be the site of the plane’s wreckage than others, and ongoing analysis is expected to further refine those results.

There are now more than 20 items of debris of interest to investigators, including seven that have been examined and determined to have come from MH370. All were found on coastlines of the western Indian Ocean, including Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues.

No debris has made landfall on Tasmania or Western Australia, effectively ruling out a crash site south of the search area.

It is not clear whether efforts to extend the search will be accepted. At a tripartite meeting in July, the transport ministers for Australia, Malaysia and China agreed that the search effort would be suspended indefinitely with the completion of the current area.

The MH370 first principles review summit currently under way in Canberra is understood to be aiming to reach a robust and fully costed proposal for the Australian transport minister, Darren Chester, to take to his counterparts in Malaysia and China – the destination of flight MH370 and home to most of its 227 passengers – to persuade them to agree to renew the search.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Analysis of the recovered right outboard wing flap section (inverted) of MH370 suggested it was not set for landing at the time it separated from the plane. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Chester said in a statement on Wednesday that the fresh ATSB report contained “important new information on what we believe happened at the end of MH370’s flight”.



He said the summit would review “all the available data and analysis associated with the search to date … inform the remainder of the search effort, and develop guidance for any future search operations”.

Both Chester and Greg Hood, the chief commissioner of the ATSB, were unavailable to speak to Guardian Australia on Wednesday. But a spokeswoman for Chester said the review summit was to review the findings so far, and expanding the search was not on the agenda.

Even if the likely site of the plane’s wreck was determined, any new search effort outside of the current area would have to be agreed upon by the three governments involved.

The challenge would likely be persuading China and Malaysia to contribute to the cost of a new search, reportedly in the region of AU$30m (£18.7m). Almost AU$200m has been spent on the underwater operation currently underway, with the bulk of the expense shouldered by Malaysia and Australia.



News that the ATSB was attempting to define a new search area, despite a lack of any funding commitment, was first reported in August. “If it is not in the area which we defined, it’s going to be somewhere else in the near vicinity,” Hood told Associated Press at the time.

The ATSB has not requested any new funding, the spokesman told Guardian Australia.

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Though Australia is leading the search for the wreckage of the plane, Malaysia holds overall responsibility for the investigation. Representatives are understood to be present at the review summit in Canberra, though not the Malaysian transport minister.

Its authorities have been accused of a lack of urgency with potential pieces of plane debris left to languish in storage, awaiting pickup, for months.

In a surprise development on Tuesday, Malaysia Airlines granted lawyers in Sydney representing victims’ families access to a huge number of company records, including maintenance log books and medical certificates of the crew.

The documents have thus far only been released to the Malaysian police report into MH370, which remains secret.

John Dawson, a partner at Carneys Lawyers, told Reuters that he had been advised he would receive the information by the end of November. Guardian Australia has contacted Dawson for comment.