[BugsyM]

 The tiny Indian Ocean island of Kuda Huvadhoo is the sleepy fishing community that the world forgot. Some of its villagers believe an aircraft they saw on the morning of March 8 last year could hold the key to modern aviation’s most confounding mystery — the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.  

Some of the locals on the 60ha of sand and coral in the Maldives chain do not understand why, after more than a year, invest­igators involved in the search for the Boeing 777 have not come to hear first-hand about the large, low-flying passenger jet they insist they saw that fateful morning.

Intriguingly, however, acoustics scientists are not ruling out the possibility that a distinctive high-energy noise they measured about the time of the presumed crash might have come from the aircraft hitting the ocean or imploding at depth in an area near the ­Maldives.

A speck on the atoll of Dhaalu in the Maldives chain, the island receives few visits from outsiders. Wealthy tourists, some of whom arrive by private jet at the airport near the country’s capital, Male, and then take a sea plane about 180km south to the pampered ­luxury of a resort costing more than $2000 a night, sometimes charter a small boat to briefly look at the modest lives here.


The technology and logistics matter little, however, to the villagers of Kuda Huvadhoo, the capital of an atoll lacking radar in a country with outdated and sev­erely limited defence and air traffic equipment. Several people we spoke to believe they saw MH370 about 6.30am (9.30am in Malaysia) that day.


“These people were not seeking attention and they did not go to the police about it, the police went to them after hearing about this,’’ the source says. “They are not dishonest and they have no motive to lie. They all told the police it was big, low and noisy. If it was not the missing plane, then which plane was it? We do not see planes close and low to Kuda ­Huvadhoo. Nobody knows what has really happened.”

There were other reasons the people of Kuda Huvadhoo were not taken seriously. The Maldives National Defence Force, responsible for guarding the security and sovereignty of the low-lying country, issued a statement in March last year ruling out any such aircraft movement over its air space. The locals were surprised and felt humiliated. Several of those we spoke to in Kuda Huvadhoo were scornful, accusing their defence chiefs of seeking to save face and not wanting to admit to their ­people or the world that the limitations of Maldives radar and other equipment could not detect such flights.

Around this time, Malaysian authorities agreed that the aircraft’s “pings” — like breadcrumbs being left in a trail — meant MH370 should have crashed somewhere along one of two potential arcs. The arcs are in opposite hemispheres, but the most probable extended in the Indian Ocean west of Perth where vessels and aircraft are engaged in a search across a massive haystack for an infinitesimally small needle.

Another wildcard is the little-known work of Alec Duncan and fellow scientists from Curtin University’s Centre for Marine Science and Technology, whose monitoring of sensitive underwater acoustics equipment, known as hydrophones, identified “a clear acoustic signal at a time that was reasonably consistent with other information relating to the disappearance of MH370”.

The scientists knew the crash of a large aircraft in the ocean would be a “high energy event and expected to generate intense underwater sounds” — either from the impact with the ocean or a subsequent implosion of sinking wreckage. In their initial location estimates, Dr Duncan placed the noise’s source in the ocean relatively close to the Maldives and Kuda Huvadhoo. However, he cautions it could have been a geological event. The official ATSB search team for MH370 carefully considered the acoustics data.

After months of further analysis, Dr Duncan told The Weekend Australian this week: “Unfortunately the reality is that there are so many ifs, buts and maybes involved in all this that it would be more correct to say that our team has identified an approximate possible location for the origin of a noise that is probably of geological origin, but cannot be completely ruled out as being connected with the loss of MH370.” Dr Duncan explained that two key factors “make us reluctant to completely rule out the possibility that these signals are related to MH370”.

One is “the calculated time of the acoustic event, shortly after the final “partial handshake” between the satellite and the aircraft”, the other is that if the sound was generated by the implosion of some part of the aircraft as it sank ... (and) at a depth of about 1000m then the resulting sound would propagate effectively in the deep sound channel and could conceivably be detected at ranges of thousands of kilometres”.

However, like the island of Kuda Huvadhoo, “the calculated position is completely inconsistent with the satellite handshake data that is the basis of the current search area”.

If the satellite handshake data ever “proved to be seriously flawed”, says Dr Duncan, further acoustics analysis should be done. And if this eventuates, the people of a tiny island in the Maldives might be asked again about the large passenger jet they insist they saw on the morning of March 8 last year.

This has bothered me for a long time, all these witnesses in the maldives saw a huge plane, and reported it.  The authorities tried to bury it.  Florence de Changy a french reporter went there and interviewed people but she tried to claim it was a maldives plane a smaller one, but there was a fellow named Blaine Gibson who also went there and got a different version than she did. 

All these witnesses saw the same thing, the maldives authorities tried to pass off a smaller plane a D8 dash or something as the plane, but all these witnesses claimed it was a huge plane something they had never seen flying so low before.  I'm sure they know what their maldives planes look like and they all said that wasn't it.

Now who was lying, the authorities or over 21 witnesses, did they all imagine they saw a huge plane that morning?  I think not, they all saw something, whether it was mh370 0r not is the question.  They all saw something that's for sure, that the authorities tried to say was a smaller plane.  Now I question that one, why would they do that?  Is there something they don't want people to know?  There is definitely something going on there.  In july of last year, witnesses also saw US military planes flying around their airspace.  I know if a plane was flying towards DG, they would've seen it long before it crossed over the maldives islands, but we most likely will never know the real truth unless the actual plane is ever found.  I have my doubts because it appears as though there are somebody's who do not want that to ever happen.  Just my opinion, and could be way off too.