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       An Explorer Believes He Found Amelia Earhart’s Plane. Experts Aren’t Convinced.

       A robotics company captured a sonar image that its chief executive believes shows Earhart’s long-lost plane at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Archaeologists say it’s too early to know.

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       Tony Romeo, the chief executive of Deep Sea Vision, shows a sonar image from an expedition last year that he believes shows Amelia Earhart’s plane at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Credit...Emon Hassan for The New York Times

       By Michael Levenson

       Jan. 30, 2024, 3:14 p.m. ET

       It is one of the greatest enduring mysteries in aviation history: the disappearance of Amelia Earhart after she took off from Lae, New Guinea, in a Lockheed 10-E Electra on July 2, 1937.

       Earhart was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world. She and a navigator, Fred Noonan, were headed to Howland Island, a tiny coral atoll in the southwestern Pacific, to refuel. But they were never seen again.

       For years, many have tried and failed to find the wreckage of their plane. Now, the head of a marine robotics company believes he has done it, although some experts remain deeply skeptical.

       Tony Romeo, the chief executive of Deep Sea Vision, says that a sonar image that his company captured during an expedition last year appears to show a plane resting about three miles down on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere within a 100-mile radius of Howland Island. He won’t give the precise location.

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       Mr. Romeo said his crew found the image on the last day of their expedition, after they had scanned 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor. Credit...Emon Hassan for The New York Times

       He said he believes it’s Earhart’s plane because the image appears to show the two distinctive fin stabilizers on the back of her aircraft and the dimensions are “very close” to those of her sleek twin-engine Lockheed.

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