[Peetwo]

Follow up to Bellew recent MH370 statements -

By Annabel Hepworth via the Oz... :
Bell

AI may aid breakthrough in search for wreckage of MH370

Malaysia Airlines boss Peter Bellew.

• Annabel Hepworth
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 1, 2017
  

Artificial intelligence technologies and other advances could lead to a breakthrough that helps locate the wreckage of the ill-fated MH370, according to Malaysia Airlines boss Peter Bellew.

Mr Bellew said he thinks that over time “there will be advances in science that will help locate the wreckage eventually”.

A “vast” amount of scientific research had been taking place since the MH370 disaster, he said.

The flight disappeared in 2014, with 239 people on board, during a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing; it is considered one of the biggest aviation mysteries.

The search for MH370 has cost Australia, Malaysia and China about $200 million.

But the underwater search was officially suspended in January when traces of the Boeing 777 could not be found after a search of 120,000sq km of ocean.

Mr Bellew, a former executive of Irish low-cost airline RyanAir, said there were people “who are spending a lot of their own resources at the moment and co-ordinating with authorities”.

“I do think somebody will make a breakthrough somewhere around this, or a combination of people,” he told The Australian yesterday.

“It will create a situation where there will be some chance of pinpointing the location of where the aircraft may well be”.

He pointed to “the availability of artificial intelligence that’s coming on stream, the cheap availability of high-capacity computing power, processing power, the focus that some leading universities around the world are starting to put into research projects and individuals that are doing doctorate research”.

Mr Bellew — in Sydney to speak on the future of the airline sector at the CAPA Australia Pacific summit this week — said finding the wreckage “might unlock closure for some people.”

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is expected to release its report on the failed search for MH370 shortly.

The three governments involved in the underwater search have said no new search would be undertaken unless there was new evidence on the specific location of the plane.

After the MH370 and MH17 disasters of 2014, the carrier was taken off Malaysia’s stock exchange as part of a restructure. Yesterday, Mr Bellew said the crashes “will always have an impact and it’s something we will never forget” but the carrier was “moving in the right direction” to return to profitability in a competitive marketplace, with bookings up in Australia.

The plan is to relist the company in Malaysia in 2019.

MTF...P2