HALVARD FALLS, Ore. — A joint expedition searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra said Monday that it had examined the object it was looking for and ruled it out as the plane, leaving the search for the plane complete and continuing.
The team, a collaboration between the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University, traveled to Nikumaroro, a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean, to examine an object it called the Taraia Object. The object first appeared in satellite imagery in 2020. Purdue said the search for the aircraft will continue.
“A plane that is not found has been found not to be there, and that is a finding,” said Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, who reviewed the expedition’s results by phone from a rental car in a parking lot. “We would expect a missing plane to look exactly like this after 89 years, if the plane had stayed missing.”
The team did not report finding the aircraft in the Nikumaroro lagoon. It did not report finding it outside the lagoon, either.
Teller said the methodology was sound because the team had reached a conclusion it had been prepared to reach since 2020. “Nobody was surprised,” she said. “The object was the only thing that stayed where it was put.”
Under the expedition’s revised findings, the plane is considered located, with its location listed as “not the lagoon.” The search is considered complete, pending the search, which Purdue said will continue.
Teller said she had reviewed the expedition’s report twice and found it consistent with itself. “The plane was not there, and that is the finding,” she said. “It is also a finding that we will be looking for again.”