A U.S. Navy underwater drone that can scan the bottom of the ocean for 16 hours at a time, is being used to look for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Deborah Gembara reports.
THE best leads in the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will be exhausted in about a week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says.
Mr Abbott told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday the Australian-led search for the missing Boeing 777-200ER in a 4500m deep stretch of the Indian Ocean, 2200km northwest of Perth, would have to rethink their approach if the Bluefin-21 minisub failed to locate wreckage.
"We believe that search will be completed within a week or so," Mr Abbott told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.
"If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider."
Malaysia's Minister of Defence & (Acting) Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein supported the Prime Minister's view, saying that the search effort would have to "regroup" and "refocus" if no debris is found.
Mr Hussein added that the underwater search had intensified and said "the search will always go on".
He acknowledged the distress being felt by families whose loved ones were on Flight MH370, and said Malaysia was working closely with Chinese authorities, and the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) on the possibility of bringing families to Perth if debris is found.
"It's not fair to just focus on Chinese families, there are 14 nationalities on board," he said.
Reassuring families ... Malaysian Minister of Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein answers questions from journalists during a press conference. Picture: Mohd Rasfan Source: AFP
The JACC leading the underwater search, which involves the Bluefin-21 using side-scan sonar to create a 3D map of the ocean floor, have said it will be long and difficult and there is no guarantee wreckage will be found.
The Bluefin-21 finally completed its first full mission overnight after two previous attempts were cut short, and has so far searched about 90sq km.
Strong front ... Tony Abbott says Australia's determined to do "whatever we reasonably can to resolve the mystery". Source: AP
An analysis of sonar data compiled during the first two missions has failed to identify any new leads.
"My determination for Australia is that we will do whatever we reasonably can to resolve the mystery," Mr. Abbott said.
"If the current search turns up nothing, we won't abandon it, we will simply move to a different phase."
Mr Abbott told the Wall Street Journal he remained confident searchers were looking in the right place for flight MH370, based on the electronic signals — the longest of which lasted more than two hours — detected by equipment towed by Australian naval vessel ADV Ocean Shield on April 5 and April 8, around the time that the black boxes' 30-day battery life was due to expire.
If the initial search fails to unearth any evidence of the missing aircraft, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on-board about one hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, analysts say a second sweep of the 60km by 40km area currently being searched could be undertaken.
It could also be expanded to a wider zone covering 804km surrounding where the area where a series of transmissions believed to have been from the aircraft's black boxes were detected last week.
If this fails, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan told the Wall Street Journal a further search could take place along a more than 595km mile by 48km stretch of ocean believed to follow the aircraft's last known flight path.
Not giving up ... Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan says a further search could take place. Source: News Limited
This is based on a partial digital "handshake" between MH370 and an Inmarsat satellite.
As the search for the missing aircraft continues into day 41, Defence Minister David Johnston said the underwater search may end up being run primarily by private companies, with estimates this could cost up to $250 million.
"Ultimately it may well be that there is a civilian contractor to come and pick up the pieces if we have no success," he told the Wall Street Journal.
He said payment for the search would probably have to be negotiated between Malaysia, the US and China.
The PM'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.
"We were very hopeful the Bluefin-21 would be the answer — the way to search for this very hard to find wreckage.
Difficult mission ... the Bluefin-21 sub (pictured) has surfaced for the second time in as many missions. Picture: Department of Defence via Getty Images Source: Getty Images
"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.
Meanwhile, authorities in Perth are testing an oil sample collected by Ocean Shield from the search zone of the missing plane.
Up to 12 aircraft and 11 ships will be part of today's search about 2100km north west of Perth.
Isolated showers and south easterly winds are predicted.
Experts are increasingly confident authorities are searching in the right place.
Despite predictions it could take two months to search the whole area, one of the world's most experienced wreck hunters yesterday expressed confidence the Joint Agency Coordination Centre had effectively found the crash site and recovering the black boxes was only a matter of time.
International effort ... People's Liberation Army air force Illyushin Il-76 on final approach to Perth International airport having just completed a search mission trying to locate missing Malaysia Airways Flight MH370. Source: Getty Images
"I think essentially they have found the wreckage site," the director of the UK-based Bluewater Recoveries, David Mearns, told the ABC.
"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'."
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was carrying 239 passengers when it disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
Mr Mearns found the wreck of the HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean in 2008 — almost seven decades after it sank in 1941 — and was awarded an honorary Order of Australia for his work.
He also helped in finding the wreckage of Air France flight 447 and said the strength of sonar pings detected last week believed to have come from the plane's black boxes indicated the search team had found its target.
"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.
Furious ... relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 walk out from a videoconference with Malaysian officials in protest at the difficulties of communications in Beijing. Source: AP Source: AP
As the search continued, more than 100 relatives of Chinese passengers on the plane walked out of a teleconference meeting with senior Malaysian officials last night, an act of defiance over a lack of contact with that country's government and for taking so long to respond to their demands.
The family members had gathered in a meeting room at a Beijing hotel where Malaysia Airlines had provided lodging and food. But they stood and filed out shortly before the call with Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, and others as it 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?"
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