HERE WE GO AGAIN

Amelia Earhart expert says there's a 90% chance he'll have found missing aviator's plane within WEEKS

 

By Jensen Bird 

 

Daily Mail

Oct 24, 2025

 

Amelia Earhart went missing while trying to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight around the globe 

 

An archeological team will embark on a journey to recover famed pilot Amelia Earhart's plane in just a few weeks - and they believe there is a 90% chance of success.

On November 4, archaeologist Richard Pettigrew and his team of 14 experts will set out for Nikumaroro island.

Pettigrew believes Earhart and her navigator crash-landed there while she was trying to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe.

Earhart was flying her Lockheed Electra 10E plane with navigator Fred Noonan when she vanished near Howland Island on July 2, 1937. 

Her intended course was a 2,556 mile journey that ended at Howland Island, 400 miles from Nikumaroro. 

Despite decades of researchers trying and failing to uncover what happened to Earhart, Pettigrew thinks that parts of her aircraft may have survived. 

And he's confident that his team will be able to recover them. 

A mysterious object off coast of the five-mile-long island in the western Pacific Ocean could be the key to Earhart's mysterious disappearance.

'We have a lot of evidence to go on, and I believe the chances are 9 out of 10 that it’s Amelia’s plane, but we won’t know until we go in there and take a look at it,' said archeologist Pettigrew told the Baltimore Sun.

They will investigate the 'Taraia Object', a 'visual anomaly' in a lagoon on Nikumaroro that they think could be Earhart's missing

 

Richard Pettigrew (pictured) will lead a team of experts hoping to recover the lost pilot's plane

 

Satellite imagery revealed the long, suspiciously plane-shaped item after a historic cyclone swamped the area in 2015. 

Pettigrew said the storm swept the plane into visibility, clearing enough sediment to make it visible in the satellite images in 2020. 

Promisingly, the Taraia Object was later confirmed to be visible on aerial photos taken of the island's lagoon as far back as 1938, the year after the tragedy. 

Pettigrew told the Baltimore Sun that he theorized Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan died as castaways just short of their final destination.

He thinks the two of them survived on the island for at least a week before succumbing to the elements. 

Expedition members plan to depart Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 for the Marshall Islands, about 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii. On Nov. 4, they will sail the 1,200 miles in six days to Nikumaroro.

 

Pettigrew and his team believe that a mysterious object on Nikumaroro Island could be the missing aircraft

The object, referred to as the 'Taraia object' first became visible on satellite imagery after a rare cyclone 

Pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, with a map of the Pacific that shows the planned route of their last flight.

Amelia Earhart at the controls of her Lockheed Electra in which she would attempt to fly around the world. She was supposed to end her 2,556 journey at Howard Island

 

The team will spend five days there using sensing technology to get a photographic record of the site. 

If their remote technology can confirm that it's Earhart's plane, they'll return later for a full excavation.

The Trump administration ordered the declassification of any FBI files that mentioned Earhart in September, but experts said it revealed little new information. 

Fortunately for Pettigrew any newly unveiled documents do little to disprove or prove any working theories. 

Despite Pettigrew's optimism, other Earhart enthusiasts are not so confident.

Some theories suggest that they ran out of fuel and got swept to sea, with the plane chewed to pieces by the current. 

Documentary film maker and Earhart enthusiast Laurie Gwen Shapiro told the Baltimore Sun, 'I’m telling you now — there’s no plane in that lagoon.'

Through decades of expeditions, analyses of satellite images, and inspections of debris, for Pettigrew the Nikumaroro Hypothesis is alive and well.

'With the information we have in front of us right now, we have to go there and look,” said Pettigrew. 'I know that without any doubt.'