A US citizen has just proposed a new search location in Malaysia Airlines' search for MH370, just before the 12th anniversary of the plane's disappearance.
Mr. Randy Rolston - a businessman in Kansas, USA - announced a report identifying the suspected MH370 crash area as about 1,000km2 when proposing to focus searches on a 10-nautical-mile (about 18.5km) long strip in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Rolston believes that MH370 may have crashed into the sea about 1,100km east of Coral Bay, an area in the Gascoyne region, Western Australia. The new MH370 search location proposed by the American businessman is about 1,600km north of the area where officials believe it is highly likely to find the MH370 wreckage.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China in the early morning of March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people.
The aircraft made last contact with air traffic control about 38 minutes after takeoff, while flying over the East Sea, before leaving the planned flight path and disappearing completely from radar.
Satellite data analysis later showed that MH370 continued to fly for more than 6 hours after losing contact.
The first MH370 debris was found in 2015, but the bodies of 227 passengers and 12 crew members have never been found. To date, the disappearance of MH370 remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation history.
The MH370 search operation lasting 3 years, with the main participation of Malaysia, Australia and China, stopped in January 2017. This search mapped and scanned about 710,000km2 of the Indian Ocean seabed.
In the final report of the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB), an area of about 25,000km2 in the Indian Ocean was identified as the "most likely" location to contain MH370 wreckage.
Since then, the US-based private marine exploration company Ocean Infinity has conducted many searches for MH370 using autonomous diving equipment, in an area about 2,400km southwest of Perth, Australia.
Most recently, in December 2025, Ocean Infinity and the Malaysian Government announced the resumption of the search operation for 55 days with the desire to discover the body of MH370. The latest MH370 search is being implemented under an agreement that Malaysia will pay 70 million USD if the plane is found.
In a 19-page report, Mr. Rolston argued that the unusual increase in carbon monoxide recorded by NASA on the morning of March 8, 2014 may be "key evidence" showing that MH370 crashed into the sea in the area he proposed.
He said that a part of the search area he mentioned was missed in the MH370 search operation in 2014.
Mr. Rolston hypothesized that the MH370 captain deliberately diverted the plane to hide the wreckage in Wharton Basin - a deep sea area in the Indian Ocean.
This hypothesis is contrary to ATSB's report, which argues that the plane continued to fly until it ran out of fuel, likely due to passengers and crew died of oxygen deficiency.
According to American businessman Rolston, he announced this proposal because after nearly 12 years, families and relatives of MH370 victims deserve a clear answer. "Finding the last plane will bring them clarity and close the pain," he said.
