New tech 'will lead to MH370 discovery'

SYDNEY - The resting place of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will eventually be found but it will require advances in science and technology, including artificial intelligence, the carrier's chief said Tuesday.

No trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, was found during a lengthy deep-sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, with the search called off in January.

"There will be advances in science that will help locate the wreckage eventually," the company' chief executive Peter Bellew said, adding the discovery "might unlock closure for some people".

Bellew, in Sydney for an aviation meeting, said the advances could come through "the availability of artificial intelligence that's coming on stream", high-capacity computing power and university research.

He did not give further details about what specific research could lead to a breakthrough, but added that private efforts to locate the plane could also play a part.

So far, three fragments of MH370 have been found on western Indian Ocean shores, including a two-meter wing part known as a flaperon.

Australia's national science body CSIRO said in April that MH370 was "most likely" lying north of the former search zone - a 120,000 square kilometer area largely defined through satellite "pings" and the flight's estimated fuel load.

But Transport Minister Darren Chester has said the underwater probe would not resume unless new evidence emerges.

Agence France-presse