Officials to try new method to track MH370 debris

Canberra is leading the search for the aircraft which vanished in March 2014 with 239 people onboard and is currently probing the Indian Ocean floor off the Australia's far west coast.

In a regular update on the underwater search, which has so far failed to find a single piece of debris from the plane, the Australian government said a new drift modelling study would be done.

The government's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said while experts had been working to model the drift of MH370 debris over the past 18 months, a "further intensive study will be undertaken".

Of particular interest to the modelling will be the first piece of debris found from MH370 a two-metre (almost seven-foot) wing part known as a flaperon - which washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July 2015.

The agency has committed to combing some 120 000 square kilometres (46 000 square miles) of ocean floor in a process which is expected to end in December.

But it has faced scrutiny about whether the plane [which diverted from its route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing for reasons unknown] is searching in the right area.

The current search zone was defined under the "most likely" scenario that no-one was at the controls and the plane ran out of fuel.

Australian authorities stressed that the drift modelling - used to model the movement of the flaperon - was only one aspect of the search.

　

Meanwhile, in KZN - a group of three men last week started their own search along the South Coast in hopes of finding debris from the missing plane.

　

Together - Liam Lotter, debris - hunter Blaine Gibson and Neels Kruger have found 12 pieces of the airline which disappeared two years ago during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

　

Lotter and Gibson spoke to ECR Newswatch about their search mission. In case you missed it, watch the video below.