Object suspected of being Amelia Earhart's missing plane for 87 years

An ocean exploration company in September 2023 shared a sonar image of an airplane-shaped object suspected to be the Lockheed 10-E Electra of legendary female pilot Amelia Earhart.

Female pilot Amelia Earhart before she disappeared. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Amelia Earhart , the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic , flew a plane for the last time in 1937. In her attempt to fly around the world, Earhart's flight ended when the female pilot disappeared above Thailand. Binh Duong, became one of the biggest secrets in aviation history . Despite years of search efforts, Earhart's remains and the wreckage of her missing plane have never been found.

Nearly 90 years after Earhart disappeared and was declared dead without a body in 1939, the Deep Sea Vision company announced the discovery of an object that was likely the plane Earhart flew during the 1937 expedition. According to the company company in South Carolina, sonar images revealed a plane-shaped object on the seabed. Deep Sea Vision CEO Tony Romeo is very concerned about Earhart's disappearance. So he went on a 100-day journey with a $9 million Hugin drone to search for Earhart's plane.

Setting sail from Tarawa, Kiribati in September 2023, Romeo and a search team of 16 people explored a 13,468km ² seabed area and photographed an aircraft-shaped object about 160km off Howland Island about a month later. However, they made the discovery on the 90th day of their journey, so they were unable to return to the site for a closer inspection. Dorothy Cochrane, an expert at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, said the location Romeo described was geographically consistent with the location believed to be where Earhart's plane crashed.

However, experts emphasize the need for clearer images and more specific details such as the aircraft's serial number to draw conclusions. As a next step, Romeo plans to return with various types of sensors and take detailed photos of the object as well as examine its condition on the seabed. He plans to use an automatic submersible equipped with cameras and sonar to take clearer pictures of the object at a depth of more than 5,029m below the water surface. Although he cannot rule out the possibility that the object is another missing plane or an unrelated man-made object, Romeo appears confident in the discovery because of the unique shape of the body, tail and wings.