✕ marks the spot

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MH370 High-Value Cargo

shipwreck cargo OPEN fame 5/5

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished on 8 March 2014 en route Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying passengers and a manifested cargo that included a much-discussed consignment of lithium-ion batteries and mangosteens plus, per the manifest, other freight. Included as a modern "known loss, unknown main-wreck site" edge case: confirmed debris, no located main wreckage.

Scorecard

Exists
LIKELY
band 4/5 · raw +2.35
  • +1.00 · class_prior
  • +0.90 · MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER, lost contact over the South China Sea on 8 March…
  • +0.45 · Confirmed debris — beginning with a flaperon found on Réunion in July 2015 —…
Findable now
HARD-BUT-POSSIBLE
band 3/5 · raw -0.44
  • +3.00 · technique_term
  • -2.00 · location_term
  • -0.64 · Deep-ocean searches by Australia's ATSB (2014-2017) and by Ocean Infinity (2018)…
Findable (frontier)
HARD-BUT-POSSIBLE
band 3/5 · raw +0.62
  • +3.00 · technique_term
  • -2.00 · location_term
  • -0.45 · Confirmed debris — beginning with a flaperon found on Réunion in July 2015 —…

Location hypotheses

The interactive map (Leaflet + OpenStreetMap tiles) is the one part of this page that needs a network connection; the hypothesis list below is the offline-readable source of truth.

HypothesisCoordsRadiusPrior PosteriorNote
Southern Indian Ocean 7th-arc search zone -35.000, 92.800 200 km 0.50 The Inmarsat 7th-arc corridor; refined drift and BFO analyses narrow but do not fix it.

What would it take?

No emerging or speculative technique changes the picture yet — the frontier findability band (HARD-BUT-POSSIBLE) equals the current band. A breakthrough here would need a genuinely new capability, not just a maturing one.

Evidence ledger (3 verified facts)

Technique matrix

TechniqueFamilyMaturityApplicability Rationale
Autonomous AUV swarm survey marine speculative 3/3 Parallel cheap AUVs are the frontier that could cover the vast 7th-arc corridor in weeks.
Deep autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) survey marine available 3/3 6000m-class AUV survey is the only practical way to image this seabed.
Drift & current back-modeling marine available 3/3 Debris drift back-modeling (Réunion, Africa finds) constrains the entry latitude.
Side-scan sonar marine available 2/3 Towed/AUV sonar images debris fields once a zone is prioritized.

Search history (negative evidence)

YearsTechniqueCoverageDetection ResultNotes
2018 deep-auv-survey 50% 70% null_result Multi-AUV 'no find, no fee' search of priority zones; no main wreckage located.