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Tag: malaysia plane
Two Ships Scour 150-Mile Path For ‘Black Box’ Signal From Missing Malaysian Plane

Two Ships Scour 150-Mile Path For ‘Black Box’ Signal From Missing Malaysian Plane

By Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Investigators began searching underwater Friday for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with two ships homing in on a 150-mile path in the Indian Ocean where analysts believe the jet probably went down.

A pinger locator lent by the U.S. Navy was being towed by the Australian ship Ocean Shield, trying to pick up signals from the Boeing 777’s flight data recorder. A British ship with similar capabilities, the Echo, was also participating. The two vessels were dispatched to converge toward each other along the path more than 1,000 miles off the west coast of Australia.

Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search from the Australian city of Perth, said the path was chosen based on an analysis of six hours of satellite pings transmitted hourly from the plane to a satellite after other communications devices on the jetliner were turned off. But without speed or altitude data to factor into the calculations, investigators have had to model possible paths for the plane’s entry into the water.

Flight 370 disappeared 27 days ago en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard, and Houston conceded that the battery life of the flight data recorder was getting close to expiring. He said investigators had no plans to obtain other pinger locators to add to the search. “These things are in very short supply,” he said at a news conference in Perth.

Australian Navy Commodore Peter Leavy, commander of the joint task force 658, said the two ships were traveling at just three knots (3.4 miles per hour) to search at depths of nearly 10,000 feet. At that rate, it would take more than 24 hours for the two ships to cover the 150-mile track.

“The search using subsurface equipment needs to be methodical and carefully executed in order to effectively detect the faint signal of the pinger,” Leavy added.

Even if the battery on the flight data recorder expires, Houston noted that investigators could continue their subsurface search. The Ocean Shield, he said, carries an unmanned underwater exploration vehicle that can search the ocean floor for up to 24 hours at a time.

In addition to the Ocean Shield and Echo, seven other ships were participating in Friday’s search, along with 10 military planes and four civilian aircraft. Some of those other ships carry helicopters that can help look for surface debris.

“We will continue the surface search for a good deal more time,” said Houston, adding that there was a “great possibility” of finding debris.

He emphasized that finding wreckage remained crucial to narrowing down the search area. “The area is vast and remote,” he added, comparing it to the size of Ireland. “We have not searched everywhere that the aircraft might have gone.”

Over the last week, the search area has been gradually nudged further northwest of Perth, and Houston said the zone would continue to be adjusted on a “semi-regular” basis.

Asked about the cost of the search, Houston conceded that “it’s a lot of money” but refused to get into specifics. He said Australian and Malaysia officials were working on drafting a “comprehensive agreement” about the search, including how to handle debris and victims if they are eventually found, and other “critical decision points.”

In an indication that authorities remain hopeful that the search will locate the plane, Houston said Australian officials were making plans to host relatives of people aboard Flight 370 who are expected to arrive in Perth shortly.

Asked about Malaysia authorities’ statement that the plane’s disappearance had been categorized as a criminal investigation, Houston said that decision was “not relevant” to the work of the searchers at this time.

AFP Photo/Eric A. Pastor

Australia Says Debris May Be From Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

Australia Says Debris May Be From Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

By Barbara Demick and W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday that two objects that could be wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had been seen by satellite off the western coast of Australia.

“New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search … in the south Indian Ocean,” Abbott told Australia’s Parliament in Canberra on Thursday morning. “The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of two objects possibly related to the search.

“I can inform the House that a Royal Australian Air Force Orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects,” Abbott said.

He was referring to the Lockheed AP-3 Orion, a four-engine turboprop patrol aircraft that carries out submarine hunting, maritime surveillance and other search missions for the Australian military. A version of the aircraft is also used by the U.S. Navy.

Abbott said three more aircraft would be dispatched.

Flight 370 disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard. An international search operation has been focusing on two possible corridors: one heading northwest toward Turkmenistan and the other south toward Australia.

Although Abbott called the information “credible,” he cautioned in his statement that “the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for Flight MH370.”

Abbott said he had informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak of the development.

Malaysian officials said they had been briefed on the situation.

“At this stage, Australian officials have yet to establish whether these objects are indeed related to the search for MH370,” Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s acting transportation minister, said in a statement.

Abbott’s announcement came after Australia’s maritime authority narrowed the search for the aircraft to about half of the area in the vast corridor of the Indian Ocean, following analysis by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on the fuel reserves of the aircraft and how far it could have flown.

John Young, general manager of the maritime authority, described the largest of the objects as about 78 feet long and located about 1,500 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.

“This is a lead. It is probably the best lead we have right now,” Young said at a news conference in Canberra. “But we have to get there, find them, see them, assess them, to know if it is really meaningful or not. They will be really difficult to find and they may not be associated with the aircraft.”

The Australians said that four aircraft were heading to the scene Thursday, including a U.S. P-8 Poseidon.

More than 25 nations have deployed ships, aircraft and satellites in the search-and-rescue operation.

In the last week, both the U.S. and China directed their search efforts to the vast expanse of the southern Indian Ocean.

China’s official New China News Agency said Tuesday that naval vessels that were on standby in the Gulf of Thailand were divided into two groups and sent westward. One fleet was headed through the Malacca Strait into waters west of the Andaman Islands, the report said. Another fleet was heading for waters southwest of Sumatra, an island in western Indonesia.

A day earlier, the U.S. Navy pulled its guided-missile destroyer Kidd, with its two search-and-rescue helicopters, out of the effort, opting to rely on a pair of submarine-hunting aircraft from nearby land bases to scour the southern part of the ocean. The Navy did so, it said, because the planes could search larger areas with their advanced surface search radars and sensors, covering up to 15,000 square miles in one nine-hour flight.

dvanced surface search radars and sensors, covering up to 15,000 square miles in one nine-hour flight.

AFP Photo/Eric A. Pastor