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New Signal Detected In Hunt For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

New Signal Detected In Hunt For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

By Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — An Australian military plane participating in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Thursday detected an underwater acoustic signal that may be from the Boeing 777’s black boxes, Australian authorities said.

The P-3 Orion has been dropping buoys equipped with hydrophones that can pick up such signals and transmit them back to the aircraft. The buoys have been dropped in the area of the Indian Ocean where the Australian ship Ocean Shield, towing a “pinger locator” lent by the U.S. Navy, has four times picked up acoustic signals that investigators believe are being transmitted from the jet’s black boxes.

“The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight but shows potential of being from a man-made source,” Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is coordinating search efforts out of Perth, Australia, said in a statement.

Thursday’s search team consisted of up to 10 military planes, four civil aircraft and 13 ships. Searchers have yet to find any debris from the jet, which disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. The search was centered about 1,400 miles northwest of Perth and covered an area of about 22,000 square miles.

With batteries on the black box pingers expected to run out very soon, investigators are eager to detect as many signals as possible to narrow the search field before deploying underwater vehicles to look for wreckage.

AFP Photo/Eric A. Pastor

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.

Xinhua/Zuma Press/MCT

Satellite Spots 122 Objects In Malaysia Jet Search Area

Satellite Spots 122 Objects In Malaysia Jet Search Area

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Malaysian authorities said Wednesday they were encouraged by new satellite images provided by France showing 122 floating objects off the Australian coast that could be debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The discovery bolstered hopes of finding the wreckage in the choppy seas 1,500 miles southwest of Perth. Twelve airplanes, from the United States, Australia, China, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, were being dispatched over the area in hopes of directing ships that might pick up the debris for analysis.

The latest satellite photos were provided by Airbus Defense and Space and were taken on Sunday. One object was 78 feet long — similar to debris spotted earlier on an Australian satellite — while others were brightly colored, possibly indicating they were life preservers or rafts.

“This is still the most credible lead that we have,” said Malaysia’s transportation minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, at a news conference Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur. “It corroborates that there is some form of debris. If we can confirm it came from MH 370, we can move on to the next phase of deep sea surveillance, search and rescue.”

“Hope against hope,” he added, a nod to Chinese families of passengers who have not accepted Malaysia’s conclusion that the Boeing 777 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

In Beijing, the increasingly militant families held a press conference outside the Lido Hotel where they are being accommodated, accusing the Malaysian government of concealing the truth about the plane which disappeared March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

“Malaysia Airlines tried to deceive people all over the world,” yelled 30-year-old Wang Zhen, whose parents were both passengers on the missing plane. “We hope we can expose the lies of Malaysia Airlines to the world and hope they can keep their promise soon.”

During a briefing with Malaysian ambassador to Beijing Iskandar Sarudin, families demanded that the Malaysian government retract its conclusion — announced Monday night by the prime minister — that the flight was lost and that there are no survivors.

The hysteria in China is being fueled in part by rumors circulating on microblogs that the flight is being held by hijackers and that Malaysia has refused to pay ransom.

Indirectly chastising the Chinese, Malaysia’s Hussein noted that Australian relatives were behaving in a manner that is “very rationale” and that “we in Malaysia also lost our loved ones.”

Australia is leading the multinational search effort for the missing plane.

“The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be, but it’s closer to Australia than anywhere else,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday.

He said he believed the debris spotted by satellites came from the missing plane. “Bad weather and inaccessibility has so far prevented any of it being recovered but we are confident that some will be.”

Xinhua/Zuma Press/MCT