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China, Japan and Britain Join Search for Missing Jet in Indian Ocean Nations Start to Collaborate in the Search
(about 11 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — China, Japan and Britain will join the search for signs of the missing Malaysia Airlines airliner far off Australia’s west coast, where Australian aircraft used human spotters on Friday to scan a remote expanse of ocean for floating debris that might be wreckage from the plane. They found none. SYDNEY, Australia — China, Japan and Britain joined the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner in the southern Indian Ocean on Friday, while Australian search aircraft used human spotters to scan the waters for floating debris that might be wreckage from the plane.
The expansion of the multinational operation in the southern Indian Ocean illustrated how the bleak search for the missing jet has partly dampened regional tensions. China and Japan are locked in a dispute over islands in the East China Sea but their forces will work in coordination with a sophisticated United States Navy surveillance plane and Australian military P-3 Orion planes and vessels. The expansion of the multinational operation in the remote stretch of deep ocean illustrated how the increasingly bleak search for the jet was prompting some Asian nations to set aside regional tensions. China and Japan are locked in a dispute over islands in the East China Sea, but their forces will work in tandem in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, along with ships and planes from Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Two days of searching the ocean 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, have brought no sightings of possible debris from the plane. Scrutiny of an area about 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, intensified after satellite images during the week appeared to show large pieces of floating debris there. Nothing had been found by Saturday morning local time, two weeks after the plane disappeared.
Almost two weeks after the plane vanished without a trace, Hishammuddin Hussein, the defense minister of Malaysia, which is in charge of the overall search, said it was “very, very” difficult to talk with waiting families about the possibility that the 227 passengers and 12 crew members had died. Their most important question — where are their loved ones? — cannot be answered, he said at a news conference Friday near Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where the plane left on March 8 for a flight to Beijing The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, coordinating the search of the southern Indian Ocean, said Saturday that a private jet, a Gulfstream G5, had been commissioned for the search, joining a Bombardier Global Express and a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion. The planes left Perth for the search site early Saturday.
The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, kindled hope on Thursday that the waters off Western Australia might hold clues to the plane’s fate. He said that a satellite had photographed two large objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean that might be debris from the Boeing 777. Hishammuddin Hussein, the defense minister of Malaysia, which is in charge of the overall search, said on Friday that it was “very, very” difficult to talk with the families of those on the plane about the possibility that the 227 passengers and 12 crew members had died. Their most important question — where are their loved ones? — cannot be answered, he said at a news conference near Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where the plane took off for Beijing in the early hours of March 8.
Australian aircraft failed on Friday to find anything resembling the objects in the remote expanse of ocean 9,840 feet (3,000 meters) deep, the country’s maritime safety authority said. But Mr. Hishammuddin, who is also Malaysia’s acting transport minister, called the indistinct satellite images of the objects the best lead available and announced that more ships and surveillance planes would head to the area to help. The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, speaking from Papua New Guinea, where he is holding wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, said Friday that he had spoken by telephone with President Xi Jinping of China, whom he described as devastated “as are so many people in China.” He added, “This has been a gut-wrenching business for so many people, not least those who are charged with the responsibility of keeping their citizens safe.”
Japan will send two P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft to join the search, and Britain has agreed to send a naval ship, the H.M.S. Echo, Mr. Hishammuddin said. Separately, the Chinese government announced it would send three military aircraft to Australia for the search, joining a Chinese polar exploration vessel and merchant ships. Mr. Hishammuddin, who is also Malaysia’s acting transport minister, called the satellite images of the indistinct floating objects the best lead available, and announced that more ships and surveillance planes would help scour the area, alongside an American P8-A Poseidon aircraft, P-3 Orions from Australia and New Zealand and other aircraft and vessels.
“This crisis has put a heavy burden on Asian countries to cooperate,” said Bridget Welsh, a political scientist at Singapore Management University. “But there’s still the issues of wariness and lack of trust between them and some other partners.” He said that Britain would send a naval hydrographic survey ship, the Echo, and that Japan would send two more Orions. The Chinese government said it would send three military aircraft to Australia, joining a Chinese polar exploration vessel and merchant ships that are already on the way.
She said, “We see this affecting the questions of sharing data from satellite technology, working together, especially between China and the United States.” “This crisis has put a heavy burden on Asian countries to cooperate,” said Bridget Welsh, a political scientist at Singapore Management University. “But there’s still the issues of wariness and lack of trust between them and some other partners,” she said, notably between China and the United States.
Mr. Hishammuddin said he planned to call the American defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, to seek more “help with the search and rescue efforts, including remotely operated vehicles for deep-ocean salvage.” Mr. Hishammuddin said he planned to call Chuck Hagel, the American defense secretary, to seek more “help with the search and rescue efforts, including remotely operated vehicles for deep-ocean salvage.”
But the search for signs of Flight 370 is not all high-tech. John Young, the Australian official directing the search in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Australian planes would, for now at least, abandon radar scanning and rely on human spotters. John Young, the Australian official directing the search in the southern Indian Ocean, said that the Australian search planes would, for the moment, abandon radar scanning and rely instead on human spotters, a method he said was slower but more likely to yield results.
Mr. Young said that using human spotters might be slower, but that it was more promising than radar. “Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday, we have replanned the search to be visual,” Mr. Young said on Friday in a video posted online by the Maritime Safety Authority. Mr. Young is general manager of the agency’s emergency response division.
“Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday, we have replanned the search to be visual,” he said in a question-and-answer video posted online by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra, the capital, where Mr. Young is general manager of the emergency response division. “The aircraft are spaced more closely together, and we will need more aircraft for a search of that type,” he said. “Although this search area is much smaller than we started with, it nonetheless is a big area when you’re looking out the window and trying to see something by eye. We may have to do this a few times to be confident about the coverage of that search area.”
The change, Mr. Young said, involved “aircraft flying relatively low, very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows.” Cmdr. William J. Marks, the spokesman for the Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy, said in an email that the American Poseidon aircraft would continue to search using radar and other electronic sensing devices. “Even when the weather is bad, we don’t give up the radar search and exclusively switch to visual,” he said. “The radar is pretty amazing, in that you can adjust for sea clutter to optimize the search.”
Because of the distance from the shore, Australia’s P-3 Orions have only a couple of hours over the area where the objects may be floating, the maritime safety authority said. Mr. Young said on Friday that investigators were looking for more clues to the current location of the floating objects seen in the satellite images.
“The aircraft are spaced more closely together and we will need more aircraft for a search of that type,” Mr. Young said. “Although this search area is much smaller than we started with, it nonetheless is a big area when you’re looking out the window and trying to see something by eye. We may have to do this a few times to be confident about the coverage of that search area.” “We want to find these objects,” he said, “because they are the best lead to where we might find people to be rescued.”
The search planes flying out to sea from a base near Perth have included four of the Royal Australian Air Force’s Orion P-3 surveillance aircraft. An ultralong-range Bombardier Global Express jet hired by the Australian search operation is also involved. And the hunt has been joined by New Zealand, which has sent a P-3 Orion surveillance plane, and the United States, which has sent a Navy P-8A Poseidon search plane. David Griffin, an oceanographer studying currents in the southern Indian Ocean, said that satellite monitoring and computer models could help predict where objects might drift. “Assuming they stay floating, we can say to some extent where they are going in the future and where they came from in the past,” he said, though he added that the shape of the objects, and especially how deep they are in the water, could make a difference.
Cmdr. William J. Marks, the spokesman for the United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said in an email that the Poseidon would probably spend three hours over the search area on Friday, as it had on Thursday. He said it would continue to use radar and other electronic sensing devices for the search.
“Even when the weather is bad we don’t give up the radar search and exclusively switch to visual,” he said by email. “The radar is pretty amazing in that you can adjust for sea clutter to optimize the search.”
The Australian government’s announcement of the satellite findings Thursday ignited intense media interest. But the search for the objects seen in the images could be time-consuming, with no guarantee that they can be found and even less certainty that they are indeed from the missing plane.
Both Mr. Young and Mr. Abbott, the prime minister, sought Thursday to temper any hopes that parts of the jet might finally have been found. One of the floating objects appeared to be around 80 feet (24 meters) long, Mr. Young said, but he could not say what shape it was or whether it had markings that would identify it. The other appeared to be about 16 feet long, or five meters, he said.
“We will be looking to see if we can acquire more satellite imagery that would provide new or refined information,” Mr. Young said on Friday. “We want to find these objects, because they are the best lead to where we might find people to be rescued.”
The stretch of ocean where the objects were spotted sees relatively little traffic. But a cargo ship that happened to be somewhat close, bound for Melbourne, Australia, from the island of Mauritius, was diverted south from its usual route two days ago at the request of the Australian authorities. It reached the area of the satellite sighting late on Wednesday, the first ship to arrive there, but its crew saw nothing on Thursday. An Australian naval vessel dispatched to the area was still several days away.
David Griffin, an oceanographer who is working with the Australian maritime authority to study currents in the southern Indian Ocean, said that satellite monitoring and computer models of currents and other conditions could help predict where the objects might drift. But he also said there was the real risk that they could sink before searchers find them.
“Assuming they stay floating, we can say to some extent where they are going in the future and where they came from in the past,” said Mr. Griffin, who works for Australia’s chief scientific research institute, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
The southern Indian Ocean does not usually harbor large amounts of flotsam and jetsam, such as shipping containers from merchant vessels, he said.
“The main thing is the draft and how far it hangs down into the water,” Mr. Griffin said. He said a piece of debris with a one- or two-meter draft, or depth below the surface, would drift in an ocean current in a way that is different from, for example, a fishing net hanging 50 meters down in the water. The ocean depth is a fairly constant 3,000 meters, or 9,840 feet, in the search area, he said.
Flight 370 stopped communicating with ground controllers about 40 minutes after it took off. For more than an hour, military radar tracked a plane that is believed to be the Malaysia Airlines plane, veering sharply off the original course and flying west toward the Indian Ocean. Automatic satellite signals emitted by the plane indicated that it kept flying for hours after that, with the last signal detected about a half-hour before it would have exhausted its fuel.
By that point, the signals indicated, the plane was probably somewhere along a broad arc sweeping from Central Asia through Southeast Asia and out into the ocean; officials are concentrating on the southern portion of the arc as the most likely area, and that is roughly where the floating objects were seen.
A senior American investigator said he was “highly skeptical” that the debris spotted by the satellite came from an airplane. “I’ve seen the pictures,” he said. “Those pieces are pretty damned big.” In a crash, he said, the airplane usually breaks up into smaller pieces.