Resources

Engine-cowl fragment — Mossel Bay

South Africa · March 2016 · “Roy” piece

Rolls-Royce engine-cowling part recovered near Mossel Bay. In the debris tables at a high-likelihood class. Drift timing is one of the awkward pieces in CSIRO’s work.

Orion 123-hour engine bench test

January 2012 · Manassas, Virginia

Propulsion endurance exceeded the 120-hour flight objective on the ground rig before the airframe flew.

External / uninterruptible autopilot on 9M-MRO

Engineering precedent exists. Installation on this airframe is not established.

Boeing US7142971B2 and Cubic US6641087B1 describe remote engagement, disconnected cockpit controls, dedicated links. No maintenance/mod/certification record currently in this archive places that architecture on 9M-MRO.

Mossel Bay, South Africa

Engine-cowl fragment with Rolls-Royce marking

Almost-certain / highly likely 777 cowling in the western gyre.

Handshake 7 — aircraft-initiated log-on

00:19:29 UTC · probable fuel exhaustion

The SDU sends a log-on request, then a log-on acknowledge eight seconds later. The investigation treats this as power-up after dual engine flame-out.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau

Lead of the 2014–2017 southern Indian Ocean search

Drew and exhausted the 120,000 km² underwater box. Operational-search report is the engineering baseline for later Ocean Infinity boxes.

Blelly & Marchand: last log-on is not necessarily a straight dive

Independent paper used by Mentour: right-engine flame-out, APU start, cross-feed, possible eastward or gliding end. BFO steep-descent figures can be read as a manoeuvre, not only as a wreck on the arc.

Controlled descent / ditching

Someone still flying at the end

A pilot or system flies a glide after flame-out, so the wreck lies tens of kilometres from the 7th arc. Flaperon damage is read by some independent engineers as consistent with a ditching sequence.

Richard Godfrey

Independent · WSPR tracking

Aerospace engineer arguing Weak Signal Propagation Reporter anomalies trace MH370 to a ~2,827 km² circle near 29.1°S 99.9°E. End-points have moved. Method not peer-reviewed.

A NEW Trace! The FULL MH370 Story, so Far

Mentour Pilot · Petter Hörnfeldt · 16 March 2024 · 56:06

Type-rated 737 captain’s reconstruction from the 2018 report, Inmarsat BTO/BFO, and the Blelly–Marchand end-of-flight paper. Argues the transponder was selected off in two steps, not failed as a unit. Closes with a WSPR lead and a request to restart the search.

Boeing US7142971B2 — uninterruptible automatic control

Remote engagement · disconnected onboard controls

Confirmed patent disclosure. Claims include remote initiation, dedicated comms distinct from other aircraft communications, disabled onboard override, and automatic landing at a predetermined (including military) site.

Capt. Patrick Blelly & Jean-Luc Marchand

Independent trajectory paper

End-of-flight reconstruction used by Mentour: flame-out, APU, cross-feed, possible glide. Argues the last BFO need not be a wreck on the 7th arc.

Fuel exhaustion, then uncontrolled descent at the 7th arc

Prevailing official end-of-flight model

After a long southern cruise the aircraft flames out near 00:19 UTC, the SDU logs on from APU/emergency power, and the aeroplane leaves controlled flight. Wreckage should lie on or near the 7th arc.

Inmarsat

Classic Aero I-3 · Perth Ground Earth Station

The communications company that became the principal witness to MH370’s last six hours.

Last ACARS transmission

17:07:29 UTC

The final Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System message leaves 9M-MRO. Expected reports at 17:37 and 18:07 never arrive.

Mechanical / cargo-fire failure

Official report: no identified failure mode fits

A running systems failure that also produces a coherent reverse course and six more hours of SATCOM is a poor fit. Lithium-battery cargo was reviewed and not adopted as cause.

MH370 departs Kuala Lumpur

16:42 UTC · 00:42 MYT 8 March 2014

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777-2H6ER registered 9M-MRO, takes off from KLIA runway 32R bound for Beijing Capital International Airport with 227 passengers and 12 crew.

Safety Investigation Report — MH370

Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Team · 30 July 2018

The official accident report. Cause undetermined. Diversion likely from manual inputs; third-party intervention not excluded; 00:19 log-on treated as fuel exhaustion. No wreckage, no recorders.

The Debris Swarm

Jeff Wise · Finding MH370 S1E19 · 15 November 2024 · 39:26

After six months with only the Réunion flaperon, a cluster of western-Indian-Ocean pieces appears in 2016. CSIRO reverse-drift and barnacle work are the scientific spine; the swarm’s timing is the puzzle Wise keeps open.

The Operational Search for MH370

ATSB AE-2014-054 · final search report 2017

Australia’s account of how the southern Indian Ocean search box was drawn, refined, and exhausted over 120,000 km². Primary technical home of the 7th-arc argument used in the field.

The Search for MH370 — Journal of Navigation

Ashton, Dickinson, Hall, Roberts, Smith · Inmarsat · 2014/15

The paper that showed how BTO and BFO from routine signalling units can reconstruct a long flight the airline did not know it still had.

Wikipedia — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

en.wikipedia.org · living page · ingested 18 September 2026

Crowd-maintained digest of the public case: 239 dead, 9M-MRO, 8 March 2014, KUL–PEK, cause undetermined. Useful as a citation map into ATSB, MOT, Inmarsat and Ocean Infinity. Not a primary source.