Day’s search for missing Malaysian airliner turns up empty
Day’s search for missing Malaysian airliner turns up empty
(about 5 hours later)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia said Sunday that it had received fresh satellite images from France of potential debris from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, but Australian officials said the day’s search by planes ended with no significant sightings.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — France announced Sunday it had new satellite data showing potential debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the latest in a stream of images that has raised hopes that the jet may finally be found.
The French images are the third set of pictures that show what could be debris from the plane. They show “potential objects” in the vicinity of the “southern corridor,” a large stretch of Indian Ocean where Malaysian authorities believe the plane might have crashed, the Malaysian government said in a statement.
But Australian officials said a search by planes on Sunday produced no significant sightings.
But the statement did not specify if the objects were close to other potential chunks of debris spotted on satellite images released by China and Australia, or when the images were taken. Malaysia said it had passed on the image to the Australian authorities, who are coordinating the search in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
The French images are the third set of satellite pictures issued in the past week that depict what could be wreckage from the plane that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board. However, it was not clear whether they came from the same part of the Indian Ocean where other satellite images were taken.
The latest clues in the investigation of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane include a satellite image released by the Chinese government on Saturday of a large floating object, not far from two other objects spotted in the water and announced by the Australian government a few days before.
The French Foreign Ministry said radar echoes from a satellite had indicated the presence of debris in the ocean around 1,400 miles from the Australian coastal city of Perth but gave no direction or date.
A civilian plane operating as part of the search effort on Saturday reported seeing a number of other smaller floating objects in the same general area of ocean, including a wooden pallet and some “strapping belts” of different colors and lengths, according to the Australian search team.
That is roughly the same distance from Perth as satellite pictures released earlier by China and Australia, but a Malaysian official, who declined to be named, told the Associated Press they were nearly 600 miles to the north of the other images, meaning they could not be related.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) expanded the search effort again on Sunday in the light of the most recent sightings, with four military aircraft and four civilian jets scouring two areas of ocean of around 22,800 square miles in total.
“France had decided to mobilize complementary satellite means to continue the search in the identified zone,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Low fog hampered the search in the early hours, but John Young, general manager of AMSA’s emergency response division, said weather conditions in this remote part of the Indian Ocean appeared to be improving.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority on Sunday expanded the search effort once again, in light of the most recent sightings, with four military aircraft and four civilian jets scouring two areas of ocean of around 22,800 square miles in total.
Nonetheless, AMSA said in a statement Sunday evening that “there were no sightings of significance” from the day to report.
The hunt for the plane — which vanished mysteriously while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing — is already one of the broadest aviation search-and-rescue operations in history.
Some of the planes were looking for the large object spotted by the Chinese satellite, others for the smaller debris seen from a commercial jet involved in the search on Saturday, or for the two objects seen in earlier satellite images.
Low fog hampered the search in the early hours Sunday, but John Young, general manager of the Australian maritime agency’s emergency response division, said weather conditions in the remote part of the Indian Ocean appeared to be improving.
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The grainy satellite photograph of a “suspicious floating object” issued by the Chinese was taken about 75 miles southwest of the debris sighting announced by Australia last week. The photograph was dated March 18, two days after the images from Australia were released.
The grainy satellite photograph of a “suspicious floating object” issued by the Chinese was taken about 75 miles southwest of the debris sighting announced by Australia last week. The photograph was dated March 18, two days after the images from Australia were released.
AMSA said the Chinese image was “consistent” in size and location with the other images. It said its planes had passed over the area identified in the Chinese image on Saturday without spotting anything but that they would look again on Sunday, using “drift modeling” to work out where it might have floated in the past five days.
The Australian maritime agency said the was “consistent” in size and location with the other images. It said its planes had passed over the area identified in the Chinese image on Saturday without spotting anything.
The object spotted by the Chinese was 74 feet long by 43 feet wide. That is too wide to have come from a plane “unless it is the root of wing,” said Peter Marosszeky, an aviation expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “It is a possibility, though unlikely.”
The object spotted by the Chinese was 74 feet long by 43 feet wide. That is too wide to have come from a plane “unless it is the root of the wing,” said Peter Marosszeky, an aviation expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “It is a possibility, though unlikely.”
A Boeing 777-200 is 209 feet long, with a wingspan of 199 feet and a tail height of 60 feet above the ground. Its body is 20 feet in diameter.
A Boeing 777-200 is 209 feet long, with a wingspan of 199 feet and a tail height of 60 feet above the ground. Its body is 20 feet in diameter.
Even if empty fuel tanks inside the wing were filled with air, some experts also doubted a fragment of that size could stay afloat for 10 days after the Malaysia Airlines plane vanished March 8, especially in rough seas.
Even if empty fuel tanks inside the wing were filled with air, some experts also doubted a fragment of that size could stay afloat for 10 days after the Malaysia Airlines plane vanished.
Mike Barton, the rescue coordination chief at AMSA, said the biggest challenge hinged on the search area’s “remoteness from anywhere.” That meant search planes were operating at the limits of their endurance, prolonging the search, he said.
Mike Barton, the rescue coordination chief at the Australian maritime agency, said the biggest challenge was the search area’s “remoteness from anywhere.” That meant search planes were operating at the limits of their fuel supply, prolonging the search, he said.
The P-3 Orion used by the Australian and New Zealand air forces typically take four hours just to reach the search area, which begins some 1,250 miles southwest of the western Australian city of Perth, and can only spend a couple of hours on site before returning to base.
If planes can find any of the floating objects or any new ones of interest, the next step will be to get a ship to the area and fish them out of the water. “Until we find them and have a good look at them, it’s hard to say if they have anything to do with the aircraft,” Barton said at a news conference in the Australian capital, Canberra.
Nor was it proving easy, even for trained observers, to scan the vast expanse of ocean for a few scattered pieces of debris, some of which may be semi-submerged.
An Australian naval vessel is now in the area, while a small flotilla of Chinese ships is heading to the search zone in the coming days. Merchant ships that had been involved in the search have been released, the Australian maritime agency said on Sunday.
“Looking straight down from above from a satellite is showing a floating object of some description, but actually determining what it is, from an aircraft at a lot lower altitude, looking into the sun, with haze and all the rest of it, is proving difficult,” Barton said.
Japan and India were also sending more planes, while two Chinese Ilyushin aircraft had arrived in Perth and were due to join the search Monday, the Australian agency said.
Nevertheless, hopes have also been raised by the first sighting from the air, when a civilian plane reported seeing a “number of small objects” floating in the water on Saturday within a radius of three miles, including a wooden pallet and some strapping belts of different lengths and colors, according to Barton.
On Sunday, the Malaysian government denied recent U.S. media reports that the passenger jet had been pre-programmed to turn sharpy westward before it vanished from radar. Those reports, citing unidentified U.S. officials, said the plane’s last transmission through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, at 1:07 a.m. on March 8, indicated the shift in route, casting suspicion on the two pilots.
However, when a New Zealand air force P-3 Orion surveillance plane “with specialist electro-optic observation equipment” went to the area later on Saturday, it found only clumps of seaweed — illustrating just how challenging this search has become.
This was not true, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport said in a statement. “The last ACARS transmission, sent at 1:07 a.m., showed nothing unusual,” it said.
“That’s the nature of it; you only have to be off by a few hundred meters in a fast-flying aircraft,” Barton said.
Barton said the use of wooden pallets was “quite common” in the airline industry, but said they were also used by shipping, describing the sighting as a “possible lead.”
If planes can find them again, the next step will be to get a ship to the area and fish them out of the water. “Until we find them and have a good look at them, it’s hard to say if they have anything to do with the aircraft,” Barton said at a news conference in the Australian capital Canberra.
An Australian naval vessel is now in the area, while a small flotilla of Chinese ships is heading to the search zone in the coming days. Merchant ships that had been involved in the search had been released, AMSA said on Sunday.
Japan and India were also sending more planes, while two Chinese Ilyushin aircraft had arrived in Perth and were due to join the search Monday, AMSA said.
Young called Sunday’s search a “logical continuation” of previous searches, and said efforts were constantly being made to refine the search area to make it as accurate as possible.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar at 1:21 a.m. March 8, not long after setting off from Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing. It then did a U-turn and headed west back across the Malaysian peninsula, military radar showed. The Malaysians running the investigations have said they believe the flight must have been deliberately flown off course, either by one of the pilots or by hijackers, but officials have not ruled out catastrophic mechanical failure.
On Sunday, the Malaysian government denied recent U.S. media reports that the flight was pre-programmed to turn around before it vanished from radar. Those reports, citing unnamed U.S. officials, said the plane’s last transmission made through its ACARS system at 1:07 a.m. indicated the aircraft had already been pre-programmed to make a U-turn and had cast suspicion on the two pilots.
This was not true, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport said in a statement. “The last ACARS transmission, sent at 1:07 a.m., showed nothing unusual,” it said. “The 1:07 transmission showed a normal routing all the way to Beijing.”
Meanwhile, the search for debris from the plane has been complicated by strong and unpredictable currents in that part of the Indian Ocean.
Experts say currents in the area are generally moving in a northeasterly direction, at around 24 knots a day, but different objects can drift at different speeds, and eddies make drift modeling unpredictable.
Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, said the new debris spotted by the Chinese satellite could not have been the same as the larger object spotted by Australia — it was too far away and in the wrong direction. But it could easily have come from the same crash site as the previous objects, but be drifting more slowly, he said.
“The bigger it is, the harder it is to move,” he said. “It is totally consistent with what we know.”
The search has also become a race against time — before the objects spotted by satellite drift too far, break up, sink in heavy ocean swells or fall victim to bad weather..
Meteorologists say worse weather is expected to set in next week, threatening rain, huge swells and wind-driven whitecaps in an inhospitable part of the Indian Ocean below latitude 40 degrees south, known as the Roaring Forties because of its frequent fierce westerly winds.
A Category One cyclone struck Australia’s Christmas Island on Saturday, 1,600 miles northwest of Perth, and could bring further bad weather to the search area.
Time pressure is heightened by the fact that the location beacon built into the plane’s flight recorder, or “black box,” is likely to keep transmitting for only another two weeks before its batteries run out.
If debris from the airliner is found, complex and uncertain mathematical modeling will have to be employed to track back and find out where the plane might have come down, and naval vessels equipped with sonar technology will have to sweep the area, listening for beeps from the black box.
Then, it will be a case of searching the deep ocean floor, roughly two miles beneath the surface, with undersea drones to look for the main wreckage.
When an Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, the first debris and bodies were pulled from the sea after five days, but it took more than two years to find the main wreckage on the ocean floor. That was partly because mathematical models of ocean currents initially sent investigators to the wrong place.
Meanwhile, the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane is continuing in other parts of the world, both over land across vast expanses of central and southeast Asia and over other parts of the Indian Ocean where the plane’s final satellite transmissions suggested it might have been at 8:11 a.m. on March 8.
