As the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane continues, aviation experts are admitting it may never be found.
9News aviation expert Greg Feith told the channel on Tuesday: “It’s a modern day Amelia Earhart lost flight.
He added: “Unless we really start to see some positive results in the next probably 96 hours, I have a feeling that there’s going to come a point where they are going to start to terminate the search.”
A relative of passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, pictured on Wednesday
Aviator Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan left Papua New Guinea on 2 July 2 1937 during a quest to circumnavigate the world along an equatorial route. They were never seen again.
International efforts to locate the plane and the 239 people on board it are now entering a second week.
Recent reports claim Maldives islanders saw a “low flying jumbo jet” on the day the plane disappeared.
The news came as it emerged that investigators have discovered the runways of five airports near the Indian Ocean loaded into Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home-made flight simulator.
Meanwhile Colleen Keller, a scientist who led the search for the wreckage of the Air France jet in 2009 also fears time is running out to locate the aircraft.
Amelia Earhart and her aircraft disappeared in 1937
She told Sky News: “We’re going to need some significant leads to find it.”
Keller who worked as an analyst for Metron, a scientific consultancy for the US Navy, added: “I think the search area is so big. I’m certainly hoping the criminal investigation will yield some motives that will steer us in the right direction.
Oceanographical engineer Mike Purcell admitted: “It’s possible we’ll never find out what happened. I think there are just so many unknowns right now.”
If the plane isn’t found, there will be a wealth of legal paperwork to decipher.
Brian Harvel, a law professor and director of the International Aviation Law Institute at DePaul University in Chicago tells the Boston Globe: “The international aviation legal system does not anticipate the complete disappearance of an aircraft.
