KUALA LUMPUR: A decade into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, researchers are accusing the authorities of showing little interest in the search for the missing airliner.
In an interview on 60 Minutes Australia, aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey said this is despite the surfacing of fresh clues, which may have led to the discovery of the aircraft in a short amount of time.
"They are certainly showing very little interest. We have shared our research with them. They say thank you very much, but we never get any response."
Godfrey had previously analysed thousands of disturbances in radio signals caused by an aircraft on the night of March 8, 2014, where he claimed that the aircraft was MH370.
He then used the data to plot the exact flight path into the Indian Ocean, where he was confident about where the aircraft had ended up.
"I am confident, I've been joined by two eminent scientists. We have also offered our research and our programmes to academics around the world.
"We're down to an area search area which has a radius of 30 kilometres, so it's something that could be done in just a matter of a couple of weeks.
"I don't think it can get much more credible from a scientific point of view. I don't think you could get more precise in knowing the flight route and knowing the crash location," he said.
Meanwhile, fisherman Kit Olver, who claimed that a part of the aircraft had snagged into the net of his deep-sea fishing trawler a mere seven months after the disappearance of the aircraft, said the authorities at that time doubted his findings.
"As soon as we saw it, we thought (it was part of the aircraft). Of course, we did, and we got a pretty fair look at it."
Olver however was not able to salvage the part as he was forced to cut the net, but later reported his find to authorities soon after he returned to land, and again three years later.
"They responded by saying that they thought that it could be a container and I knew it was not a container, it was a wing of an aircraft.
"Many people just simply don't believe me. Amongst those criticisms was that I didn't pull my phone out, or take a photo.
"If it's not part of MH370, then what is it?" he asked.
The fate of the aircraft carrying 239 people left Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) for Beijing lingers on as the darkest hour in the folds of the country's aviation history, as it vanished from the radar screen about two hours after takeoff on March 8, 2014.
Several countries had launched large-scale search operations in the southern Indian Ocean, but they found no plane or wreckage.
The New Straits Times has since reached out to the Transport Ministry for comments on the matter.