No MH370, but search finds 19th century shipwreck

  • 14/01/2016
An autonomous underwater vehicle was sent to take high-res images of the site (Joint Agency Coordination Centre)
An autonomous underwater vehicle was sent to take high-res images of the site (Joint Agency Coordination Centre)

They haven't found missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 yet, but searchers have found a shipwreck at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in their hunt for the aircraft.

It's the second such discovery since the search for the doomed flight began almost two years ago.

Sonar imaging has revealed the wreck of an iron or steel-hulled vessel around 3.7km below the surface which is believed to have gone down at the turn of the 19th century.

It was found by the Havila Harmony - one of three ships searching for the missing plane - which used an autonomous underwater vehicle to further examine the site and capture high-resolution sonar imagery.

While the fuselage of MH370 hasn't been found, a 2-metre flaperon from its wing washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean in July last year.

It was the first evidence the plane had crashed, and also provided a vital clue to where the rest of the aircraft might be.

Nothing has been found since, despite more than 80,000sq km of the seafloor being searched based on satellite analysis of the aircraft's likely trajectory after it diverted from its flight path.

An Australian-led team is continuing to comb the southern Indian Ocean where it is believed the flight went down.

MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

In May last year, sonar imagery showed an anchor along with other objects searchers believed were man-made.

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