Drift analysis and prediction of debrisfrom Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. The Malaysian Prime Minister concluded that “flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean” on 24 March 2014. A piece of marine debris, later confirmed to be a flaperon from flight MH370 by the French prosecutor, was found on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean on 29 July, 2015. In the present study, the aircraft debris are assumed to drift in the surface layer and the vertical movement is not taken into account. Based on the surface drifting buoys and maritime objects drift prediction model, the drifting trajectories and time scales of the debris are estimated. It was found that 100 drift buoys passed in the possible air crash waters and eleven of them finally reached Reunion according to analysis of surface drift buoys in Indian Ocean. Among these, two buoys drifted northwestward took about 500 days, close to the debris drift time, testified the possibility that debris from the possible air crash waters could drift to Reunion, from the point of observational facts. The Leeway factors were reparameterized and the wave effect was ignored. The OSCAR reanalysis currents and CFSR reanalysis winds in southern Indian Ocean were processed as forcing field. Then a maritime objects drift prediction model for the southern Indian Ocean was established based on Leeway maritime drift theory. Three scenarios experiments with different initial time (5 d apart) were designed. 1024 objects were placed in the possible air crash waters to enhance statistical significance. Each experiment was divided to three conditions with different leeway factors of 0.012, 0.015 and 0.018. The experiments were carried out to compute the drift trajectory of 9216 objects in total initially placed in the possible air crash waters from March 2014 to July 2015 for 500 d. The results show that the trajectories of the objects are basically the same with the surface drift buoys, indicating the robust performance of the drift prediction model. 53, 48 and 47 objects are found in Reunion Island area for the three experiments, with the probability of 17‰, 16‰ and 15‰. Three kinds of trajectory are concluded for the objects in Reunion Island area at the end of the prediction. The first kind is drifting northeastward then northwestward then westward; the second kind is drifting northward then westward; the third kind is drifting northwestward. The probabilities of objects arrive in the Reunion Island area with different leeway factors of 0.012, 0.015 and 0.018 are 7‰, 13‰ and 28‰. The probability increases along with the leeway factor. The possible reason is that during the drift area, the wind is mainly southeast trade wind. Due to the long integration time, position difference of every time step accumulates, eventually causing the large distance of different leeway factors. The possible air crash waters and currently search area estimated by relevant departments are correct, indirectly verified by this research.