New technology could hold key to MH370 disappearance

Only a small amount of debris have ever been found from flight MH370. Photo / Getty

Breakthrough technology could finally solve the world's biggest aviation mystery, eight years after MH370 disappeared.

Australian air safety investigators, spearheaded by a new director, have quietly renewed their search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Only a small amount of debris have ever been found from flight MH370. Photo / Getty

New Zealanders Paul Weeks and Ximin Wang were on the plane before its mysterious disappearance.

The plane departed Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing on March 8, but lost contact with air traffic control after 38 minutes.

A report by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, who helped design part of the International Space Station, says MH370 hit the ocean 1933km due west of Perth, and lies 4000m under the water – a precise location in the northern part of the search zone many experts believe the plane is.

In an upcoming Sky News Australia documentary, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has confirmed it and Geoscience Australia have been reviewing their data after the release of Godfrey's report.

The ATSB's involvement in the search for the plane officially concluded five years ago, but the bureau's new chief commissioner, Angus Mitchell, has renewed focus on "the largest unsolved mystery of our time".

"We are going over all the old data, looking for anything that might have been missed," Mitchell told the Sky News documentary.

"Because it [the report] puts the aircraft in an area that we have already searched, I guess me coming in with a due diligence and a new set of eyes, we are taking a review of the data that we hold there and that's being done with Geoscience Australia."

Godfrey claims ham radio technology, Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR), can be used to detect and track the aircraft.

Mitchell said he didn't want to give false hope to families, but Godfrey's research is "credible".

"Whether it's credible enough to track an aircraft remains to be seen," Mitchell told Sky News.

In the documentary, Mitchell shows two empty boxes built to house the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from MH370 when it is found.

Mitchell told Sky News "one day, it would be great for them to be full".

"Either those boxes, or if there's another search party that locates it, at the end of the day, everyone, from the families to the investigators that were part of this team to the worldwide aviation community to those who travel on planes, want the answers to MH370," he said.