And RMAF failed to launch fighters...
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MALAYSIAN Airlines flight en route to China is missing.
- Thread starter GoldenPeriod
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And RMAF failed to launch fighters...
Unmanned submersible set to scour Indian Ocean seabed in hunt for missing flight MH370
PUBLISHED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 7:22pm
UPDATED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 11:36pm
Agencies in Perth
Bluefin 21, the autonomous underwater vehicle, is hoisted back onboard the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield after test in the southern Indian Ocean. Photo: Reuters
Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC), speaks at a press conference in Perth. Photo: Xinhua
An unmanned submarine was last night due to be lowered into the Indian Ocean to scour the seabed for wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, as an oil slick spotted by a ship's crew provided another glimmer of hope that the hunt is coming to an end.
The Bluefin 21 will replace the "towed pinger locator" that was being pulled along by the ship Ocean Shield in an attempt to trace signals from the Boeing 777's black boxes.
Four possible signals were detected from April 5 to 8, but after six days of silence experts fear the batteries from the flight recorders may have died.
Angus Houston, who is heading the search operation, said yesterday: "We haven't had a single detection in six days so I guess it's time to go underwater."
The submarine will use sonar technology to compose a high-resolution 3D map of the seabed, which should reveal any wreckage on the ocean floor.
But it will be working at its limits as it is built to operate at a maximum depth of 4,500 metres - the approximate depth of the ocean in the area that the search teams are targeting.
The current planned search area in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia. Photo: EPA
Houston warned it would be a "slow and painstaking process", with the craft covering just 40 square kilometres in each 24-hour period.
Houston described the ocean floor at the search site, where the plane and 239 people onboard may have come to rest, as "an area new to man".
"It's not sharply mountainous or anything, it's more flat and almost rolling, but we understand ... that part of the Indian Ocean has a lot of silt. That will complicate how things are on the bottom."
Meanwhile, Houston revealed that the crew of the Ocean Shield had detected an oil slick approximately 5.5 kilometres downwind from the vicinity of the "pings" heard last week. Two litres of the oil have been scooped up for analysis, although it will be several days before the sample can be taken ashore and tested.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
More than half of Malaysians believe government withheld MH370 information
PUBLISHED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 2:19pm
UPDATED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 4:36pm
Andrea Chen
[email protected]
Malaysian Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussin hugs a family member of a missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 during his visit in Putrajaya on March 29, 2014. Photo: EPA
Over half of Malaysians say their government have been withholding information in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, a survey by a Malaysian opinion research firm has found.
The poll results, reported in news portal The Malaysian Insider, indicated that 54 per cent of the 1,029 respondents believed the Malaysian government hid information about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The Boeing 777-200 plane disappeared from civilian radar screens hours after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8.
Some 26 per cent of the respondents said the government had been truthful, while one fifth said they were unsure.
Almost all of the ethnic Chinese Malaysians who took part in the poll, along with a slight majority of Malay and Indian respondents, said they doubted the government had been transparent about information on the missing flight.
The survey was conducted by the opinion research firm Merdeka Centre from March 24 to 30, according to The Malaysian Insider.
Over a thousand respondents, proportional to the population in each parliamentary constituency, were selected through random stratified sampling methods in line with ethnicity, gender and age, said the firm.
The survey results did not surprise Wan Saiful Wan Jan, Chief Executive Officer of the Kuala Lumpur-based think tank Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, who said the Malaysian government had a reputation for keeping information to itself.
“In fact, having press conferences on a daily basis is unthinkable before the MH370 crisis,” said Wan Saiful.
A common practice of the Malaysian government in handling domestic issues, he said, was to make announcement without taking any questions from the press.
Malaysian authorities have attracted much criticism for its poor handling of the missing jet crisis, especially during the first week when different government bodies were busy giving conflicting statements, and were later revealed to have withheld crucial radar data.
“The government is not willing to give away military secrets like the radar capability, and that it does not have the technical capability to confirm much of the information, and lacks efficient communication among different government departments,” said James Chin, a political science scholar.
The professor from Monash University in Malaysia said the half-century-long authoritarian leadership led to the state’s lack of transparency.
“Malaysia is a semi-authoritarian state. The ruling party has been in power since the founding of the country, and it is not used to being questioned,” said Chin.
Nearly a month into the search, Malaysia’s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on April 5 that an independent investigator would be appointed to try and find out what happened to flight MH370.
Wan Saiful said the disappearance of MH370 has thrust the Malaysian government into the international spotlight and thus forced it to become more transparent to the media.
“There has been great improvement, thought we are still far from meeting the international standard,” he added.
But Chin was not as optimistic.
“It [Malaysian government] will go back to their common practice after the flight saga ends. Unless there’s a change in power, there will be no chance for a more transparent government.”
Undersea drone hunt for Malaysian plane may take two months
By Lincoln Feast and Byron Kaye
SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:25am EDT
The Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield sails in the southern Indian Ocean as it continues to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in this picture released by the Australian Defence Force April 15, 2014. REUTERS-Australian Defence Force-Handout via Reuters
(Reuters) - A U.S. Navy underwater drone sent to search for a missing Malaysian jetliner on the floor of the Indian Ocean could take up to two months to scour a 600 sq km area where the plane is believed to have sunk, U.S. search authorities said on Tuesday.
The prediction coincided with the end to the abbreviated first mission by the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle six hours into what was meant to be a 16-hour operation on Monday after it exceeded its 4.5 km (14,750 feet) depth limit and was automatically returned to the surface.
The introduction of the undersea drone marks a new slower paced phase in the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 which disappeared on March 8 and is presumed to have crashed thousands of km (miles) off course with the loss of all 239 people on board.
Authorities, who soon plan to scale back the air and surface search, are confident they know the approximate position of wreckage of the Boeing 777, some 1,550 km (960 miles) northwest of Perth, and are moving ahead on the basis of four acoustic signals they believe are from its black box recorders.
But having not heard a "ping" for almost a week and with the batteries on the locator beacons two weeks past their 30-day expected life, the slow-moving "autonomous underwater vehicle" was launched on Monday to try and locate wreckage.
"The AUV takes six times longer to cover the same area as the towed pinger locator. It is estimated that it will take the AUV anywhere from six weeks to two months to scan the entire search area," Lt. J.G. Daniel S. Marciniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, said in a statement.
From its aborted first mission, the Bluefin-21 produced six hours of data which authorities analyzed to find no objects of interest, Marciniak added. The drone was expected to embark on its second search mission late on Tuesday.
The robot, which takes two hours to descend another two to return to the surface, as well as several hours to download data, will build up a detailed acoustic image of the area using sophisticated "sidescan" sonar. It hopes to repeat its success in finding a F-15 fighter jet which crashed off Japan last year.
It is capable of spending up to 16 hours scouring the sea floor. If it detects possible wreckage, it will be sent back to photograph it in underwater conditions with extremely low light.
Officials are focusing their acoustic search on an area equivalent to a medium-sized city - 600 sq km (230 sq miles). But the much broader search area off the Australian coast covers about 60,000 sq km, according to the government.
The deep sea area now being searched, the Zenith Plateau, has never been mapped in detail because it is not in any country's economic zone.
However the sea floor is likely covered in "foraminiferal ooze", a sludge formed by microscopic marine organisms, which would show up any large metallic object clearly, James Cook University marine geologist Robin Beaman told Reuters.
"A sidescan is very good at detecting the difference in the acoustic return of a hard object versus a soft, muddy sea floor," he said. "This is quite a good environment for looking for wreck debris, albeit deep."
The Bluefin's main challenge was to remain within 50 meters (165 feet) of the seabed to ensure the best quality sidescan detection without exceeding its 4.5 km depth limit which could risk damaging it, Beaman said.
Malaysian authorities have still not ruled out mechanical problems as causing the plane's disappearance, but say evidence suggests it was deliberately diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
An aircraft's black box records data from the cockpit and conversations among flight crew and may provide answers about what happened to the missing plane.
The search for the missing plane is on track to be the most difficult and expensive search and recovery operation in aviation history.
(Additional reporting by Matt Siegel in SYDNEY; Editing by Michael Perry and Ron Popeski)
More than half of Malaysians believe government withheld MH370 information
PUBLISHED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 2:19pm
UPDATED : Monday, 14 April, 2014, 4:36pm
Andrea Chen
[email protected]
Malaysian Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussin hugs a family member of a missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 during his visit in Putrajaya on March 29, 2014. Photo: EPA
Over half of Malaysians say their government have been withholding information in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, a survey by a Malaysian opinion research firm has found.
The poll results, reported in news portal The Malaysian Insider, indicated that 54 per cent of the 1,029 respondents believed the Malaysian government hid information about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The Boeing 777-200 plane disappeared from civilian radar screens hours after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8.
Some 26 per cent of the respondents said the government had been truthful, while one fifth said they were unsure.
Almost all of the ethnic Chinese Malaysians who took part in the poll, along with a slight majority of Malay and Indian respondents, said they doubted the government had been transparent about information on the missing flight.
The survey was conducted by the opinion research firm Merdeka Centre from March 24 to 30, according to The Malaysian Insider.
Over a thousand respondents, proportional to the population in each parliamentary constituency, were selected through random stratified sampling methods in line with ethnicity, gender and age, said the firm.
The survey results did not surprise Wan Saiful Wan Jan, Chief Executive Officer of the Kuala Lumpur-based think tank Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, who said the Malaysian government had a reputation for keeping information to itself.
“In fact, having press conferences on a daily basis is unthinkable before the MH370 crisis,” said Wan Saiful.
A common practice of the Malaysian government in handling domestic issues, he said, was to make announcement without taking any questions from the press.
Malaysian authorities have attracted much criticism for its poor handling of the missing jet crisis, especially during the first week when different government bodies were busy giving conflicting statements, and were later revealed to have withheld crucial radar data.
“The government is not willing to give away military secrets like the radar capability, and that it does not have the technical capability to confirm much of the information, and lacks efficient communication among different government departments,” said James Chin, a political science scholar.
The professor from Monash University in Malaysia said the half-century-long authoritarian leadership led to the state’s lack of transparency.
“Malaysia is a semi-authoritarian state. The ruling party has been in power since the founding of the country, and it is not used to being questioned,” said Chin.
Nearly a month into the search, Malaysia’s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on April 5 that an independent investigator would be appointed to try and find out what happened to flight MH370.
Wan Saiful said the disappearance of MH370 has thrust the Malaysian government into the international spotlight and thus forced it to become more transparent to the media.
“There has been great improvement, thought we are still far from meeting the international standard,” he added.
But Chin was not as optimistic.
“It [Malaysian government] will go back to their common practice after the flight saga ends. Unless there’s a change in power, there will be no chance for a more transparent government.”
talk about Western transparency first. Takes Snowden to show how dirty the US is.
Malaysia Airlines MH370: Wreck hunter confident plane will be found
ABC
By Adam Harvey April 16, 2014, 5:32 am<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid
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One of the world's foremost wreck hunters believes searchers have found the crash site of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, and recovering the plane's black boxes is inevitable.
"I think essentially they have found the wreckage site," the director of the UK-based Bluewater Recoveries, David Mearns, told 7.30.
"While the Government hasn't announced that yet, if somebody asked me: 'Technically, do they have enough information to say that?' my answer is unequivocally 'Yes'."
Mr Mearns solved one of the nation's greatest maritime mysteries when he found the wreck of HMAS Sydney deep in the Indian Ocean.
He was awarded an honorary Order of Australia for his work.
His advice was also crucial in helping to find the wreckage of Air France flight 447.
His confidence is based on the strength of the sonar "pings" emitted from the plane's black box recorders.
Those signals appear to have now stopped as the device ran out of battery strength.
"You just don't hear these signals randomly in the ocean. These are not fleeting sounds - they have got four very, very good detections, with the right spectrum of noise coming from them. It can't be from anything else," Mr Mearns said.
However, he understood why the searchers were being cautious.
The leader of the joint taskforce searching for MH370, Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, says he will wait to see wreckage before confirming the plane has been found.
"Obviously for the sake of the families and for everybody else they will want photographic proof and that will be coming shortly," Mr Mearns said.
A robotic submarine, the Bluefin21, is already scanning a five-kilometre-by-eight-kilometre area of the seabed - 4,500 metres below the surface of the Indian Ocean.
It was due to stay down for 24 hours, but automatically ascended after just two hours of scanning when it reached its maximum operating depth.
Mr Mearns says he would be surprised if the sonar search turned up anything quickly.
He expected it would take weeks, if not months, to recover the black boxes from the Boeing 777.
The plane's cockpit voice recorder and data recorder are separate devices.
He says the real breakthrough in the investigation was made during the analysis of MH370's flight path.
"Somewhere out of some place, fantastic pieces of intelligence were put together to really narrow it down to a small, small area," he said.
"And that's how these guys have been able to find it so quickly.
"The Ocean Shield was out there a couple of days and they got a hit. That has been a tremendous success and miraculous. People were searching for a miracle. This was one."
What were the "pieces of intelligence" that he was referring to? I think it is more than the so-called unprecedented calculation.
Is it really miraculous or do they know more than what have been released?
The most obvious giveaway was the sudden abandoning of the original search site (based on satellite images of debris) to the present location based on an unprecedented calculation. They seems to know that there was no debris as the pilot could have done a great landing with the whole plane remaining intact. However, the waves soon bring it to the bottom of the ocean.
The whole incident have a strange feel that, "those who know" is not wanting the world to KNOW, but can not help it to play along to show they do not KNOW & is helping to search, hoping that it takes ages to find & by then, whatever can be found is damaged beyond analysis & then blame it on act of God...for God cannot give press conference, to deny or confirm!...the longer it takes to find...the better!..for soon, every one gets tired & soon forget that there was ever a MH370 flight with passengers...for Malaysia really bolleh!...no bodies can be found!
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Robot sub makes first complete search for missing flight MH370
Unmanned sub makes first search for Debris from Flight MH370 not cut short by technical problems
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 April, 2014, 9:34am
UPDATED : Thursday, 17 April, 2014, 11:31am
Associated Press in Perth
Crew aboard the Ocean Shield move the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 into position to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The sub made it first complete scan on Thursday. Photo: AFP
A robotic submarine has completed its first full 16-hour mission scanning the floor of the Indian Ocean for wreckage of the missing Malaysian airliner after two previous missions were cut short by technical problems and deep water, authorities said on Thursday.
The Bluefin 21 had covered 90 square kilometres of the silt-covered sea bed off the west Australian coast in its first three missions, the search co-ordination centre said on Thursday. While data collected by the sub from its latest mission, which ended overnight, was still being analysed, nothing of note had yet been discovered, the centre said.
A total of 12 planes and 11 ships were to join what could be the final day of the surface ocean search for debris from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
Thursday’s search would cover a 40,300-square-kilometre patch of sea about 2,200 kilometres northwest of the Australian city of Perth, the centre said.
When the sea bed search began this week, authorities announced that the days of the fruitless surface search were numbered as the chances of success dwindled.
But a sample of an oil slick found this week about 5.5 kilometres from where underwater sounds that could be from an aircraft black box beacon were heard has been shipped to Perth for analysis, the centre said.
The analysis could provide further evidence that the hunt for Flight 370 was headed in the right direction. Searchers have yet to find any tangible proof that the sounds that led them to the sea floor were from the ill-fated jet.
On Wednesday, Chinese relatives stormed out of a teleconference meeting in Beijing to protest against the Malaysian government for not addressing them in person.
Relatives of Chinese passengers onboard the missing flight walk out from a video-conference with Malaysian officials in protest at communication difficulties on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
More than 100 relatives of Chinese passengers on the plane walked out of a teleconference meeting with senior Malaysian officials, an act of defiance over a lack of contact with that country’s government and for taking so long to respond to their demands.
They had gathered at a hotel where Malaysia Airlines had provided lodging and food but filed out shortly before the call with Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, was about to start.
“These video conference meetings often don’t work, the sound stops and it’s constantly disrupted. Is that how we are going to communicate?” said Jiang Hui, one of the family members, after the walkout. “Do they need to waste our time in such a way?”
Jiang said the Malaysian government had not met demands the relatives had presented to them weeks ago in Malaysia – an apology for the way they’ve handled the matter along with meetings with the Malaysian government and airline officials. They also asked to sit down with executives from Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the manufacturer of the plane and its engines.
The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Radar and satellite data show it flew far off-course for an unknown reason and would have run out of fuel over the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.
A ship-towed device detected four signals underwater that are believed to have come from the airliner’s black boxes shortly before the beacons’ batteries died. The sounds helped narrow the search area to the waters where the Bluefin 21 is now operating.
The US Navy’s unmanned sub cut short its first mission on Monday because it exceeded its maximum operating depth of 4,500 metres. Searchers moved it away from the deepest waters before redeploying the sub to scan the seabed with sonar to map a potential debris field.
In addition to finding the plane itself, investigators want to recover the black boxes in hopes the cockpit voice and flight data recorders contain answers to why the plane lost communications and flew so far off-course before disappearing.
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Plane search rethink within a week: PM
AAP
April 17, 2014, 1:32 pm<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid
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PM Tony Abbott says the best leads in the search for flight MH370 will be exhausted within a week.AAP PM Tony Abbott says the best leads in the search for flight MH370 will be exhausted within a week.
The best leads in the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 will be exhausted in about a week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr Abbott said if the Bluefin-21 underwater drone scanning the Indian Ocean's seabed in the search area fails to locate wreckage, a rethink would have to take place.
"We believe that search will be completed within a week or so," Mr Abbott said.
"If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider."
Mr Abbott said he was confident searchers were looking in the right place for the plane based on the electronic signals, possibly from the aircraft's black boxes, detected by equipment towed by Australian naval vessel ADV Ocean Shield on April 5 and 8.
The prime minister's latest comments come as the US media questions the Australian government's use of the single Bluefin-21 in the search area after its first two missions were aborted.
The man who led the search for aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart's plane in the Pacific Ocean has been critical of the Bluefin-21.
"I can tell you it didn't work for us," Richard Gillespie, founder of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, told CNN.
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"We were very hopeful the Bluefin-21 would be the answer - the way to search for this very hard to find wreckage.
"What we found was the Bluefin-21 couldn't perform reliably.
"We had extremely frustrating aborted missions, just as we have seen in the Indian Ocean.
"We saw malfunctions."
Mike Dean, the US Navy's deputy director for salvage and diving, told CNN one of its Orion-towed search systems was available in Maryland for use in the search if Australia requested it.
The Orion can send back real-time data to searchers.
Other search experts say a REMUS 6000 autonomous underwater vehicle, used to find Air France flight 447 after it went down in 2009, would be more suitable.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was carrying 239 passengers when it disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
- Mysterious and unmapped -
"It has not been mapped -- in fact most of the deep ocean has not been mapped," Charitha Pattiaratchi, an oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, said of the search area.
"It is very cold and dark with high pressures -- 450 times that at the surface."
Experts cannot even agree on the nature of the seascape, variously described as flat, rocky or coated in super-fine silt that could envelop and hide wreckage.
The US Navy estimates the Bluefin-21 may need "anywhere from six weeks to two months to scan the entire search area". Nothing has been detected yet.
Authorities may need to take a step back and begin seafloor mapping by ships at the surface to get an idea of the environment below, said Ian Wright, director of science and technology at Britain's National Oceanography Centre.
"It would give you an idea, for instance, of which areas were hard substrate, volcanic ridges, faults, those sorts of things," Wright said.
Afterwards, submersibles could be sent down for a closer inspection of more defined areas.
There is a gathering sense that the Bluefin-21 might not be up to the enormous task of searching a large undersea expanse at depths more than 2,000 feet lower than where the Titanic came to rest.
Angus Houston, the Australian head of the search operation, acknowledged Monday that "much larger", and deeper-diving, equipment may be needed.
"They are being looked at as we speak," he said, adding that partners in the international search will need to discuss "who has the capabilities to do this work" at such depths.
Robot sub makes first complete search for missing flight MH370
Unmanned sub makes first search for Debris from Flight MH370 not cut short by technical problems
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 April, 2014, 9:34am
UPDATED : Thursday, 17 April, 2014, 11:31am
Associated Press in Perth
Crew aboard the Ocean Shield move the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 into position to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The sub made it first complete scan on Thursday. Photo: AFP
A robotic submarine has completed its first full 16-hour mission scanning the floor of the Indian Ocean for wreckage of the missing Malaysian airliner after two previous missions were cut short by technical problems and deep water, authorities said on Thursday.
The Bluefin 21 had covered 90 square kilometres of the silt-covered sea bed off the west Australian coast in its first three missions, the search co-ordination centre said on Thursday. While data collected by the sub from its latest mission, which ended overnight, was still being analysed, nothing of note had yet been discovered, the centre said.
A total of 12 planes and 11 ships were to join what could be the final day of the surface ocean search for debris from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
Thursday’s search would cover a 40,300-square-kilometre patch of sea about 2,200 kilometres northwest of the Australian city of Perth, the centre said.
When the sea bed search began this week, authorities announced that the days of the fruitless surface search were numbered as the chances of success dwindled.
But a sample of an oil slick found this week about 5.5 kilometres from where underwater sounds that could be from an aircraft black box beacon were heard has been shipped to Perth for analysis, the centre said.
The analysis could provide further evidence that the hunt for Flight 370 was headed in the right direction. Searchers have yet to find any tangible proof that the sounds that led them to the sea floor were from the ill-fated jet.
On Wednesday, Chinese relatives stormed out of a teleconference meeting in Beijing to protest against the Malaysian government for not addressing them in person.
Relatives of Chinese passengers onboard the missing flight walk out from a video-conference with Malaysian officials in protest at communication difficulties on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
More than 100 relatives of Chinese passengers on the plane walked out of a teleconference meeting with senior Malaysian officials, an act of defiance over a lack of contact with that country’s government and for taking so long to respond to their demands.
They had gathered at a hotel where Malaysia Airlines had provided lodging and food but filed out shortly before the call with Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, was about to start.
“These video conference meetings often don’t work, the sound stops and it’s constantly disrupted. Is that how we are going to communicate?” said Jiang Hui, one of the family members, after the walkout. “Do they need to waste our time in such a way?”
Jiang said the Malaysian government had not met demands the relatives had presented to them weeks ago in Malaysia – an apology for the way they’ve handled the matter along with meetings with the Malaysian government and airline officials. They also asked to sit down with executives from Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the manufacturer of the plane and its engines.
The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Radar and satellite data show it flew far off-course for an unknown reason and would have run out of fuel over the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.
A ship-towed device detected four signals underwater that are believed to have come from the airliner’s black boxes shortly before the beacons’ batteries died. The sounds helped narrow the search area to the waters where the Bluefin 21 is now operating.
The US Navy’s unmanned sub cut short its first mission on Monday because it exceeded its maximum operating depth of 4,500 metres. Searchers moved it away from the deepest waters before redeploying the sub to scan the seabed with sonar to map a potential debris field.
In addition to finding the plane itself, investigators want to recover the black boxes in hopes the cockpit voice and flight data recorders contain answers to why the plane lost communications and flew so far off-course before disappearing.
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The relatives are way too much. Ought to be imprisoned.
Another dead end for MH370 search as tests show oil slick was not from plane
Unmanned sub makes first search for Debris from Flight MH370 not cut short by technical problems
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 April, 2014, 9:34am
UPDATED : Friday, 18 April, 2014, 1:38am
Associated Press in Perth
Seaman Morgan Macdonald observes markers dropped from a Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3K Orion after an object was sighted in the southern Indian Ocean during the continuing search for the missing flight. Photo: Reuters
Investigators who analysed samples of an oil slick in the hunt for the missing Malaysian airliner say that it did not come from the plane.
The search co-ordination centre said the oil tested in the western Australian city of Perth came up negative for aircraft oil or hydraulic fluid. The oil was collected earlier this week from a slick about 5.5 kilometres from the area where equipment picked up underwater sounds consistent with an aircraft black box.
The Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Cesar Chavez conducting a replenishment-at-sea with the Royal Australian frigate HMAS Toowomba to support the international effort to locate Malaysia flight MH370. Photo: AFP
It had been hoped that the oil would be evidence that officials are looking in the right place for flight 370, which vanished March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. Searchers have yet to find any physical proof that the sounds that led them to the ocean floor were from the ill-fated jet.
The centre has begun analysing data collected by a robotic submarine that completed its first successful scan of the seabed yesterday.
The unmanned sub's first two missions were cut short by technical problems and deep water, but the Bluefin 21 finally managed to complete a full 16-hour scan of the silt-covered seabed far off Australia's west coast.
Crew aboard the Ocean Shield move the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 into position to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The sub made it first complete scan on Thursday. Photo: AFP
While data collected during the mission was still being analysed, nothing of note had been discovered, the centre said. There are fears that wreckage could have been enveloped in a thick layer of m&d-like silt on the ocean floor, complicating detection and eventual recovery.
The US Navy's unmanned submarine cut short its first mission on Monday because it exceeded its maximum operating depth of 4,500 metres. Searchers moved it away from the deepest waters before redeploying the sub to scan the seabed with sonar to map a potential debris field.
But the centre said yesterday that officials are now confident that the sub can safely go deeper than was thought, allowing it to cover the entire search area, which has been narrowed based on further analysis of the four underwater signals.
Earlier this week, the search effort leader, Angus Houston, had said the surface hunt would be ending within days. But the search coordination centre said crews would continue searching the ocean surface into next week. Malaysia's defence minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, confirmed that the search would continue through the Easter weekend, but acknowledged that officials would have to rethink their strategy at some point if nothing is found.
"There will come a time when we need to regroup and reconsider, but in any event, the search will always continue. It's just a matter of approach," he said.
Radar and satellite data show the Boeing 777 flew far off course for an unknown reason and would have run out of fuel over a desolate patch of the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
MH370 search to be most costly ever at $100 mln: analysts
AFP
April 18, 2014, 2:51 pm
Sydney (AFP) - The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is set to be the most expensive in aviation history, analysts say, as efforts to find the aircraft deep under the Indian Ocean show no signs of slowing.
The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, after veering dramatically off course en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and is believed to have crashed in the sea off Australia.
Australia, which is leading the search in a remote patch of water described as "unknown to man", has not put a figure on spending, but Malaysia has warned that costs will be "huge".
"When we look at salvaging (wreckage) at a depth of 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles), no military out there has the capacity to do it," Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Thursday.
"We have to look at contractors, and the cost of that will be huge."
Ravikumar Madavaram, an aviation expert at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, said Malaysia, Australia and China, which had the most nationals onboard the flight, were the biggest spenders and estimated the total cost up to now at about US$100 million (72 million euros).
"It's difficult to say how much is the cost of this operation ... but, yes, this is definitely the biggest operation ever (in aviation history).
"In terms of costs this would be the highest," he told AFP.
- Hopes rest on submersible -
In the first month of the search -- in which the South China Sea and Malacca Strait were also scoured by the US, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam -- the Pentagon said the United States military had committed US$7.3 million to efforts to find the plane.
Meanwhile the Indian Ocean search, in which assets have also been deployed by Australia, Britain, China, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand, has failed to find anything conclusive.
Hopes rest on a torpedo-shaped US Navy submersible, which is searching the ocean floor at depths of more than 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) in the vicinity of where four signals believed to have come from black box recorders were detected.
David Gleave, an aviation safety researcher at Britain's Loughborough University, said the costs "will be of the order of a hundred million dollars by the time we're finished, if we have found it (the plane) now".
But he said the longer it took to find any wreckage, the more costs would mount because scanning the vast ocean floor "will take a lot of money because you can only search about 50 square kilometres (19 square miles) a day".
Salvaging anything would also depend on how deep the ocean is at the crash point and how dispersed the wreckage, with weather and politics also complicating factors, he said.
The fate of MH370 has drawn parallels with the hunt for Air France Flight 447 which plunged into the Atlantic in 2009.
The two-year operation to recover its black box, which involved assets from France, Brazil and the US, has been estimated to have cost 80-100 million euros, according to figures cited by France's Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA).
- 'One of the most difficult searches ever' -
Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre says its main focus is still on finding flight MH370.
"It is one of the most difficult searches ever undertaken and could take some time," JACC said in a statement to AFP.
"The cost of the search is significant. The exact figure has not yet been calculated.
"The cost is being shared by our international partners who have contributed their people and military and civilian assets to help with the search."
As the search continues, all international partners are meeting their own costs. But governments and militaries will need to consider the broader cost implications of the search down the track, said Kym Bergmann, editor of Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter.
"I don't think that the Australians would be getting any change at all out of Aus$1 million day," he told AFP.
Bergman said it would likely be the most expensive aviation search given how long it had already dragged on.
"It must be starting to worry military planners," he said, adding that any decision to scale back would cause heartache to the families involved.
Malaysia-based Madavaram agreed, saying at present it was still "politically insensitive" to cut spending.
"I think they will continue one or two months irrespective of the costs," he said. "But then if nothing is found, it will become a wild goose chase, and people will start questioning it."
Mini-sub dives deeper in search for plane
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 19 April, 2014, 12:01am
UPDATED : Saturday, 19 April, 2014, 1:21am
Agencies in Perth
The unmanned Bluefin-21, which maps the seafloor by sonar, has searched 110 square kilometres so far. Photo: EPA
The mini-sub searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had reached depths well beyond its normal operating limits, officials said yesterday, as it made its fifth dive to the seabed.
Searchers have extended the hunt beyond the normal 4,500-metre depth range of Bluefin-21, the US Navy's Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).
"The AUV reached a record depth of 4,695 metres during mission four," the US Navy said. "This is the first time the Bluefin-21 has descended to this depth. [It] does carry with it some residual risk to the equipment and this is being carefully monitored."
With no results to show since the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared on March 8, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has stepped up the timetable to locate the plane, which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean west of Perth.
The unmanned Bluefin-21, which maps the seafloor by sonar, has searched 110 square kilometres so far. But the data retrieved has not yet revealed anything of value.
Abbott was quoted on Wednesday as saying that "we believe [the underwater] search will be completed within a week or so. If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider".
Asked to clarify Abbott's comments, his office said he was only suggesting that authorities may change the area being searched by the Bluefin-21, not that the search would be called off.
Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, promised that the search would continue even if there was a pause to re-evaluate the mission, including the best area to scour.
Suggestions have emerged that more sophisticated - and very expensive - deep-diving equipment may be needed for the search.
"We have to look at contractors, and the cost of that will be huge," he said, though he indicated that such concerns were not yet testing the resolve of multinational search partners.
Analysts have said they expect the search will be the most expensive in aviation history, with Ravikumar Madavaram, an aviation expert at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, estimating the bill at US$100 million so far.
"This is definitely the biggest operation ever," he said. "In terms of costs, this would be the highest."
Malaysian media, meanwhile, reported that Canberra and Kuala Lumpur would sign a deal specifying who handles any wreckage that may be recovered, including the crucial "black box" flight data recorders.
Malaysia was drafting the agreement "to safeguard both nations from any legal pitfalls that may surface during that [recovery] phase,"
The
New Straits Times reported.
"The memorandum of understanding spells out exactly who does what and the areas of responsibility," civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman was quoted as saying.
The New Straits Times quoted a source with "intimate knowledge" of the deal saying that it also specified where any passenger remains would be taken to and who would be responsible for autopsies.
Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Bloomberg
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