Back in the Search Zone, with John Waters [S2Ep45 video]

Survey vessel Armada 86 05 has returned to the area where MH370 is thought to have crashed

Earlier this month the Malaysian government announced that the seabed search for MH370 would restart on December 30, and it looks looks like that is exactly what is happening. Right about now, as I’m putting together today’s episode on December 30, 2025, the Ocean Infinity marine survey vessel Armada 86 05 is pulling up to the search area, where it will deploy its three underwater robots to acoustically scan the seabed.

The area that they’re planning to search is relatively small — just 10,000 square kilometers, compared to about 250,000 square kilometers during earlier searches between 2014 and 2018. That implies that they think they have a pretty specific idea of where to look.

When I made the last episode two weeks ago, Armada 86 05 had just set sail from Benoa Port on the island of Bali, it had conducted some sea trials, and it was heading directly towards the search area. Given its speed and the distance involved, it looked like it was on track to get to the search area early. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, the ship changed course and sailed down to Fremantle, Australia. We don’t know exactly why they had a change of plan—it might have to do with weather—but it’s worth noting that Fremantle is a port that Ocean Infinity has used in the past as a place for resupplying its MH370 search operations, because it’s the nearest port to the 7th arc.

The ship arrived in Fremantle on December 23. It didn’t actually go into the port but remained offshore before heading back out to sea again a few hours later. So literally a pit stop. It might have been taking on more fuel in order to extend its time out in the search area. It spent some time conducting more sea trials over an area where test targets had been deployed on the deep sea bed, then set out at a good clip for the search zone.

Here’s an image that Kevin Rupp posted showing how the ship is approaching the area:

(Kevin, by the way, is an excellent source of information about the seabed search. He has a good relationship with Ocean Infinity and his guesses and intutions about what’s going to happen next very often turn out to be correct. You can find his stuff on Facebook and Twitter accounts. I also recommend Don Thompson and Jay Lowe.)

Now this track is very interesting because it provides ay powerful clue as to what Ocean Infinity is going to do next. As you can see, it’s heading right for a spot north of the lower set of squiggles. These squiggles show where another Ocean Infinity ship, Armada 78 06, left off searching a long rectangular area that lies outward from the 7th arc. My guess is that Armada 86 05 will continue that project, working its way northward along this strip. This area was originally suggested by Victor Iannello on his blog a few years ago, and if Ocean Infinity follows Victor’s recommendation, they’ll go for another 170 kilometers in this direction, meaning they’ll cover an additional 5000 square miles or so.

Remember that the Malaysia government said that Ocean Infinity will spend 55 days carrying out this search, but those 55 days will not be continuous, so we shouldn’t expect that this plan is going to be carried out in the next two months, it could be stretch out over the whole of 2026 or maybe even beyond.

So that’s where we are right now. For the rest of the podcast I discuss the case with my guest John Waters, a former F-16 pilot who now flies 777s for a freight carrier and has excellent knowledge of the aircraft and its systems. John has his own aviation podcast, so it’s really a two-way interview; he’s posting an edit on his YouTube channel and I’m posting one on mine.

I was particularly fascinated by his response to my question about whether he thought it would be plausible for a hijacker to infiltrated the electronics bay without being detected.