It’s been nearly a decade since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared, leaving behind one of the greatest aviation mysteries of the century. Despite extensive search efforts and numerous theories, the location of the aircraft has remained a mystery—until now. An Australian scientist, Vincent Lyne, has introduced a new theory that he believes could reveal the “perfect hiding place” of the missing plane.
Vincent Lyne, a researcher from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, shared his findings in a viral LinkedIn post. Lyne suggests that the aircraft, which vanished in 2014 with 239 people on board, may have deliberately crashed into a deep part of the Indian Ocean known as Broken Ridge, a 20,000-foot-deep area.
“This work changes the narrative of MH370’s disappearance from one of no-blame, fuel-starvation at the 7th arc, high-speed dive, to a mastermind pilot almost executing an incredible perfect-disappearance in the Southern Indian Ocean,” Lyne wrote in his post.
Lyne’s theory challenges the previously held belief that MH370 crashed due to fuel exhaustion. Instead, he argues that the plane underwent a controlled ditching similar to the emergency landing performed by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger on the Hudson River in 2009. According to Lyne, this controlled manoeuvre suggests the plane was intact with functioning engines when it made contact with the ocean, contradicting earlier assumptions of a high-speed crash.
“This justifies beyond doubt the original claim, based on brilliant, skilled, and very careful debris-damage analyses, by decorated ex-Chief Canadian Air-crash Investigator Larry Vance, that MH370 had fuel and running engines when it underwent a masterful ‘controlled ditching’ and not a high-speed fuel-starved crash,” Lyne stated.
Lyne’s research suggests that the plane’s resting place is likely where the longitude of Penang Airport intersects with the flight path recorded on the pilot-in-command’s home simulator—a detail previously dismissed by the FBI. He describes this location as a “very deep 6000m hole at the eastern end of the Broken Ridge within a very rugged and dangerous ocean environment renowned for its wild fisheries and new deep-water species.”
Lyne has called for this new location to be prioritized in future search efforts, though the decision ultimately rests with officials and search organizations.
In his concluding remarks, Lyne confidently declared, “In short, the MH370 mystery has been comprehensively solved in science!”
While Lyne’s claims have yet to undergo further scrutiny, they offer a renewed sense of hope in the quest to uncover the fate of MH370 and bring closure to one of the most enduring mysteries in aviation history.
