What are the major competing theories about MH370 and how do Godfrey's claims compare?
Executive summary
Major competing explanations for MH370 range from a controlled diversion (pilot action or hijack) and a murder‑suicide to mechanical failure, hypoxia, or far‑fetched conspiracies; official investigators have said controls were likely deliberately manipulated but could not identify who was responsible [1]. Richard Godfrey’s proposal is technically specific: he argues that anomalies in WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) radio data mark the aircraft’s final track and a crash site near ~33°S/95°E — a zone partly overlapping previously searched areas — and his work has attracted both institutional attention and scepticism [2] [3] [4].
1. The mainstream framing: investigators point to deliberate course change
The official, widely cited line in post‑investigation reporting is that MH370’s flight controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take the aircraft off its scheduled route, but investigators did not assign responsibility to any individual; that conclusion underpins many serious hypotheses including pilot action and external interference [1].
2. Principal technical hypotheses: pilot action, hypoxia, systems failure
Competent analysts and academic teams have concentrated on a few technical scenarios: (a) deliberate diversion by someone in the cockpit (pilot suicide or politically/motivated hijacking), (b) a sudden loss-of-pressurisation or hypoxia incapacitating everyone with the plane thereafter flying on autopilot until fuel exhaustion, and (c) catastrophic systems failure or fire that disabled communications — all remain plausible within the formal literature because the available telemetry and debris do not uniquely distinguish them [5] [1].
3. Oceanographic and debris work fixes probable southern arc but not a site
Debris recovered (notably the Reunion flaperon) and drift modelling have anchored probability to a vast southern Indian Ocean area near the seventh arc; subsequent underwater searches concluded the most likely impact area lay in the southern portion of a long‑identified search polygon, but large unscanned or low‑quality zones persist and ocean currents complicate drift predictions [6].
4. Conspiracy and fringe theories continue to proliferate
Where official data leave gaps, a wide assortment of fringe ideas has flourished — ranging from secret landings (Diego Garcia or remote runways) to bizarre claims such as alien abduction — and these are repeatedly noted as speculative and unsupported compared with drift, satellite and partial wreckage evidence [7] [1].
5. What Richard Godfrey proposes: WSPR as a passive radar
Richard Godfrey, a retired aerospace engineer, asserts MH370 created measurable perturbations in global amateur radio WSPR signals; he and collaborators hypothesise that an aircraft crossing the path between a transmitter and receiver increases “anomalies” and that mapping many such disturbances yields a final track and a compact proposed crash location around 33.177°S, 95.300°E [2] [3].
6. Reception: some institutional interest, experts demand validation
Godfrey’s WSPR approach has drawn formal attention — researchers at the University of Liverpool and others are providing statistical expertise to test the method, and the ATSB acknowledged knowledge of his work while saying it had not formally reviewed his paper [8] [4]. Media and some commentators have called his claim the “closest anyone has come,” yet independent reviewers emphasise larger sample testing and cross‑validation against flights with known tracks is necessary before acceptance [9] [10].
7. Key strengths and weaknesses of the WSPR claim
Strengths: WSPR is global and archival, so in principle it offers a new data stream where conventional radar and ACARS end; Godfrey’s analysis is detailed and has prompted follow‑on academic work [2] [8]. Weaknesses: critics point out potential false positives, sparse validation to date (the method must be shown to reliably detect known 777 tracks at scale), and that parts of Godfrey’s mapped zone overlap areas already searched — meaning finding nothing would challenge the claim [10] [4] [6].
8. What reporters and researchers are doing next
Teams including Ocean Infinity, academic groups and independent searchers continue to press for targeted seabed searches informed by new hypotheses (WSPR and others); Malaysia has agreed in principle to new searches and Ocean Infinity was contracted under a no‑find, no‑fee arrangement, though weather and logistics have delayed operations — searches may revisit both previously scanned and novel candidate zones [6] [11] [12].
9. How to weigh competing claims now
Technical plausibility and independent reproducibility should guide judgment: institutional reports and drift‑validated debris constrain hypotheses [6] [1], while Godfrey’s WSPR hypothesis is promising enough to merit rigorous peer‑review and large‑scale validation before it can displace competing explanations [2] [8]. Available sources do not mention a final, independent finding that confirms Godfrey’s coordinates as the wreck site.
Limitations: this summary uses only the provided reporting; available sources do not provide conclusive proof for any single theory and ongoing searches and formal reviews are still the decisive next step [6] [4].