Yahoo Australia reports that aircraft industry magazine Flightglobal has published a mathematical and geometric calculation by mathematician and Boeing 777 Captain Simon Hardy, which indicates that MH370 came down at a particular point in the southern Indian Ocean.
Hardy fixes the spot at S39 22' 46" E087 6' 20" for the aircraft and all 239 people aboard when it disappeared on March 8 last year en route to Beijing, the report says.
"The impressive fact about Hardy's mathematics is that, despite hundreds of thousands of hits on the article containing his calculations, nobody has been able to blow a hole in them," Flightglobal's consulting editor David Learmount said.
Learmount further says in his blog that that the search efforts "has just begun to trawl Hardy's predicted position for MH370," the International Business Times reports. Currently, two survey vessels Fugro Discovery and Fugro Equator, have been scanning the ocean floor for the plane's remains. The Discovery has been using a towed sonar system and is "getting close" to the targeted area.
This is why Learmount is so optimistic about the current search efforts, even predicting that "By 3 December Fugro Discovery expects to have completed the search of the area containing, according to Hardy's calculations, the wreck of MH370 and the remains of those who went down with it."
Learmount feels that the next few weeks will yield "interesting" results, now that the rescue team has finished scouring a great part of the Indian Ocean's targeted scope. The search has officially covered 70,000 of the 120,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean floor that is intended to be scanned for evidence.
Yahoo mentions that the location identified by Capt. Hardy is just outside the 60,000 sq km initial search area and given the fuel and load, is at the extreme edge of the range of MH370.
However, despite being swept ever closer to their goal, the search team's efforts have not been easy. The IBTimes reports that weather continues to impact the vessels and that the Discovery had to return to the Australian port city of Fremantle when one of the crew members was diagnosed with appendicitis.
Nevertheless, Learmount feels "there is definite cause for renewed hope this time" and that Captain Hardy is excited about the search, having invested more than a year of mental and emotional energy into working out the whereabouts and the whys behind the MH370.
