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Tag: debris
Australia Says Plane Search Efforts Are Only Increasing

Australia Says Plane Search Efforts Are Only Increasing

By Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Crews continued searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean west of Australia on Tuesday as authorities emphasized ramped-up efforts to determine what happened to the airliner that went missing March 8.

Officials said an Australian military ship towing a pinger locator — which can scan the sea for the sounds of a beacon attached to the plane’s flight data recorder — left port for the search zone Monday night. It was expected to arrive in the search area about 1,250 miles west of Perth, Australia, on Thursday.

Searchers want to find debris from the Boeing 777, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew members, to narrow their quest for the flight data recorder. The pinger locator’s range extends only about a mile, and Australia said Tuesday’s search area was over 46,000 square miles. The beacon’s battery is designed to last only about a month, though experts say it could endure a week or two longer.

Australian officials said a Joint Agency Coordination Center, led by retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston and staffed by 20 people, was established to help coordinate the international search effort and investigate any debris that is found.

“The magnitude of our operations is increasing, not decreasing,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monday at Pearce air force base near Perth, adding that investigators are “well short” of the point of scaling back operations.

“We owe it to the grieving families of the 239 people on board, we owe it to the anxious governments of all of the countries who had people on board that aircraft … to do whatever we reasonably can to get to the bottom of this mystery,” he said, calling the quest an “extraordinarily difficult exercise.”

Australian Defense Minister David Johnston said Monday that 1,000 sailors were searching by sea and 100 personnel from 10 countries — including the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea — were searching by air. Flight 370 was traveling from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared.

Abbott said Australia would bear the costs of the new coordination center, saying it was “only reasonable” that it would foot the bill as the country in whose search and rescue zone the aircraft had probably come down. However, he added that “at some point there might need to be a reckoning; there might have to be some kind of tallying” of the expenses of the overall search.

The search effort will be a prime topic at a meeting of Southeast Asian defense ministers beginning Tuesday in Hawaii.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Monday that he would discuss the search with his colleagues from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and raise the possibility of deploying more “specific military assets” — such as possible deep-sea search-and-recovery technology — “in the event that we need to embark on a more complex phase of the operation.”

The majority of passengers on Flight 370 were Chinese nationals. A group of them arrived over the weekend in Kuala Lumpur from Beijing, and Hishammuddin said the Malaysian government would soon hold a high-level briefing — including “international experts who were not available during the briefings in Beijing … including experts from China” — for them.

Hishammuddin held a session Saturday with Malaysian and Chinese families in Kuala Lumpur, calling it “the most difficult meeting I’ve ever attended.”

“The families are heartbroken. For many, the strain of the past few weeks has been unbearable. But the one message they delivered to me again and again is not to give up hope,” he said.

In a statement late Monday, the Malaysian government said the final words received by ground controllers at 1:19 a.m. on March 8 were, “Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero,” The Associated Press reported. Earlier the government had said the final words were, “All right, good night.” The statement said investigators were still trying to determine whether the pilot or co-pilot spoke the words.

 Xinhua/Zuma Press/MCT

 

Searchers Find No Sign Of Missing Plane, Only Garbage

Searchers Find No Sign Of Missing Plane, Only Garbage

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered what oceanographers have been warning — that even the most far-flung stretches of ocean are full of garbage.

For the first time since the search focused on the south Indian Ocean 10 days ago, the sky was were clear enough and the sea was calm, allowing ships to retrieve the “suspicious items” spotted by planes and on satellite imagery.

But examined on board, none of them proved to be debris from the missing plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around the ocean.

“A number of objects were retrieved by HMAS Success and Haixun 01 yesterday,” reported the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in a release Sunday. “The objects have been described as fishing equipment and other flotsam.”

The disappointing results demonstrated the difficulty the search teams face trying to find out what happened to the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew. The plane disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Australian authorities said Sunday that a naval support ship, the Ocean Shield, will depart from Perth on Monday with a “black box detector” supplied by the U.S. Navy. The Towed Pinger Locator 25 carries a device that should be able to detect the so-called black boxes of the plane in waters as deep as 20,000 feet. The boxes record pilots’ conversations and flight data.

The search team is in a race against time because the recorder battery lasts only 30 to 45 days. The odds are stacked against finding it in time without a trail of debris to guide them. Investigators are merely surmising that the flight crashed into the Indian Ocean, based on an analysis of the flight’s path from engine data transmitted via satellite.

The most famous precedent is the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed over the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. It took two years to find the body of the aircraft and the recorder, even though pieces of debris were found within five days.

The south Indian Ocean is one of the most remote places on the planet, far from any islands, shipping lanes or flight paths. But the area accumulates surprisingly large amounts of garbage, trapped in the gyre of slowly rotating currents.

“In addition to foul weather, administrative bungling and the vastness of the search area, the search for MH 370 has been compounded by one other factor: the incredible amount of garbage already floating in the search area — and in oceans worldwide,” Marc Lallanilla wrote on the website livescience.com, where he referred to the search for Flight 370 as a “needle in a garbage patch.”

The lack of confirmed debris has prevented families from achieving any kind of closure over the deaths of their relatives. Chinese families, in particular, have rejected the assertion of the Malaysian government that the plane crashed with no survivors.

“We want evidence, truth, and dignity,” read banners that Chinese relatives held at an impromptu demonstration at a Kuala Lumpur hotel on Sunday.

Malaysia Airlines said Sunday that it will fly families of passengers to Perth and will set up a family assistance center to providing counseling and logistical support, but will do so “only once it has been authoritatively confirmed that they physical wreckage found is that of MH370.”

 AFP Photo/Malaysian Maritime Enforcement

 

Clues Emerge On Malaysia Jet, But Weather Halts Search

Clues Emerge On Malaysia Jet, But Weather Halts Search

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — More tantalizing clues emerged Thursday about the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 as fresh satellites photos showed a debris field in the South Indian Ocean off Australia, but the retrieval was frustrated by poor weather.

Thailand announced that it had spotted 300 floating objects on an earth observation satellite photograph taken Monday, although Anond Snidvongs, director of the Geo-Informatics Space Technology Development Agency, cautioned: “We cannot — dare not — confirm they are debris from the plane.” Japan also announced Thursday that one of its satellites had spotted debris in the same area.

The latest findings corroborate satellite photos taken over the weekend and provided by the French showing a debris field.

However, a flotilla of ships and planes has not been able to retrieve any of the debris for closer inspection because of gale-force winds and swelling seas. For the second time this week, the weather forced a suspension of search efforts.

A U.S Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft scheduled to join the search Thursday afternoon was grounded, while Australian and Chinese planes that went out in the morning were called back.

“The forecast in the area was calling for severe icing, severe turbulence and near zero visibility,” Lt. Cmdr. Adam Schantz, the officer in charge of the U.S. Navy Poseidon P8 aircraft detachment, was quoted telling the Reuters news agency.

“Anybody who’s out there is coming home and all additional sorties from here are canceled.”

Five ships are continuing their efforts in a 30,000-square-mile search area in the rough waters of the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, an area that Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called “as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be.”

The delay is especially maddening because promising satellite photos were released Wednesday showing 122 objects in the ocean that could be wreckage from the Boeing 777. With the heavy seas and winds, however, the debris is likely to drift elsewhere.

The waters of the South Indian Ocean are among the most treacherous in the world with underground volcanoes and strong westerly winds between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees south contributing to a phenomenon called the “roaring forties.”

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared March 8 on a red-eye run from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Although the Malaysian government last weekend declared the flight lost without survivors, many families say they are unwilling to give up hope until confirmed debris is found.

However, Chinese insurance companies have begun to pay compensation on life insurance policies for passengers aboard the flight.

China Life, the country’s largest life insurance company, said Thursday that it had already paid $680,000 to families of seven passengers. “China Life is deeply grieved at the news and will ensure compensation and all other related services are fully implemented,” a company spokesman was quoted telling the official Xinhua news agency.

Two other Chinese insurance companies said they were also paying claims on the assumption that all passengers on the flight had died.

AFP Photo/Chaideer Mahyuddin