Despite sighting of floating debris, still no confirmed signs of missing Malaysian airliner
New debris sightings but no confirmed signs of missing Malaysian airliner
(about 7 hours later)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight entered its fourth week Sunday with a growing group of planes and ships assisting in the effort, but there was still no confirmed sign of the passenger jet.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Search crews looking for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 prepared to set out again Monday morning after efforts Sunday resulted in new debris sightings but still no confirmed signs of the passenger jet.
The search for Flight MH370 stepped into a higher gear Sunday with eight ships in the area, more than ever in the Australian-led search. Meanwhile, crews on nine planes — from Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, the United States and Malaysia — continued to search from the air.
An Australian navy support vessel, which will tow U.S. Navy equipment listening for “pings” from the plane’s black box, is scheduled to depart Perth on Monday. It will join nine other ships and 10 planes scouring the Indian Ocean for signs of the plane, which vanished March 8. But the exact location of where the plane went down has not been determined.
Aircraft scouring the Indian Ocean for signs of the plane, which vanished March 8, continued to spot a number of objects floating in the water Sunday. But determining whether the debris is related to the plane will have to wait until ships locate the items and dredge them up to examine more closely. Two ships did retrieve objects Saturday, but they were described Sunday by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) as fishing equipment and “other flotsam.”
Time is running out for the search team to locate the black box, a critical piece of equipment containing cockpit audio and flight data. The box will emit signals for about 30 days, which means the operation has only about a week left to find it before it goes silent.
On Friday, the operation effectively started from scratch again in a completely different section of the southern Indian Ocean from where it had been looking. Before Friday the team spent more than a week looking much farther south. The search was moved 680 miles northeast after new analysis by investigators indicated that the aircraft was traveling faster than previously thought — and therefore ran out of fuel much sooner. Still, the new search area is 198,200 square miles.
The search for Flight 370 stepped into a higher gear Sunday. Nine planes — from Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, the United States and Malaysia — crisscrossed the 198,200-square-mile area off the coast of Australia. Crews from some of the planes spotted a number of objects floating in the water Sunday. But determining whether that debris is related to the plane will have to wait until ships locate the items and scoop them up for examination.
Two ships retrieved objects Saturday, but they were described Sunday by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority as fishing equipment and “other flotsam.” Eight ships were involved in Sunday’s search.
On Friday, the operation effectively restarted in a completely different section of the southern Indian Ocean from where it had been looking. The search was moved 680 miles northeast after new analysis by investigators indicated that the aircraft had been traveling faster than previously thought, and therefore would have run out of fuel much sooner.
[READ: Flight 370, a mysterious “one-off,” spurs calls to modernize tracking technology]
[READ: Flight 370, a mysterious “one-off,” spurs calls to modernize tracking technology]
The search team is hopeful, however, given that sightings of debris over the weekend mark the first time the Australian-led search has seen promising items in the water.
Meanwhile, 29 Chinese who had family members on the flight arrived Sunday in Kuala Lumpur seeking answers from the Malaysian government about what happened to their loved ones. Two-thirds of the 227 passengers aboard Flight 370 were Chinese, and their relatives have expressed deep frustration with Malaysian authorities since the plane went missing.
On Saturday, observers on a Chinese plane spotted three suspicious floating items that were white, red and orange, according to Chinese state-run media and AMSA. A marker was dropped so that ships can try to locate the items and confirm whether they are related to the plane that went mysteriously missing three weeks ago with 239 people on board. In another part of the ocean, searchers on an Australian plane also saw multiple objects in the water.
“We have demanded that we meet with the prime minister and the transportation minister,” said Wang Chunjiang, whose younger brother, Wang Chunyong, was on Flight 370, the AP reported. “We have questions that we would like to ask them in person.”
Time is running out for the search team to locate the critical black box containing cockpit audio and flight data from Flight 370. The black box will emit signals for about 30 days, which gives the operation only about one more week to find it before it goes silent.
An Australian navy support vessel, which will tow U.S. Navy equipment listening for “pings” from the black box, is scheduled to depart the city of Perth on Monday. But authorities still aren’t sure exactly where the plane’s flight ended.
Earlier search operations have been hindered by bad weather, but the new search area is clear of storms and operations should be able to continue Monday, according to AMSA.
Families demand answers
On Sunday, 29 Chinese family members seeking answers from Malaysia’s government about what happened to their loved ones arrived in Kuala Lumpur, said Malaysia Airlines commercial director Hugh Dunleavy, according to the Associated Press. Two-thirds of the 227 passengers aboard Flight 370 were Chinese, and their relatives have expressed deep frustration with Malaysian authorities since the plane went missing.
Family members wore matching T-shirts and held banners with messages such as, “Hand us the murderer. Tell us the truth.”
[READ: Flight 370 families in China boil in anger, march on Malaysian Embassy]
Steve Wang, a representative of some of the Chinese families in Beijing, said the relatives are demanding more answers because they were not satisfied by the responses Malaysian government representatives gave them in China, AP reported.
“We have demanded that we meet with the prime minister and the transportation minister,” said Wang Chunjiang, whose younger brother, Wang Chunyong, was on Flight 370, according to AP. “We have questions that we would like to ask them in person.”
New search area
After a week when the search for the aircraft seemed to be making progress, with satellite images showing hundreds of objects floating in the water, the sudden shift of the search area to the northeast Friday essentially put the massive effort back at square one, experts said.
“We are starting on a blank page,” said Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia who studies this corner of the Indian Ocean. “We are in exactly the same situation we were in one week ago.”
The redirection of the search comes as a result of analysis of radar data collected as the plane traveled between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, before contact was lost, AMSA said. The data show that the aircraft traveled faster than investigators thought, burned its fuel more quickly and therefore traveled a shorter distance, according to the Australians.
The plane was supposed to fly north from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing but abruptly turned sharply westward an hour into the journey, then headed south with its communications systems offline, a sequence of events that investigators are trying to unravel.
The new area, though, is much closer to Perth, which will give planes more time to search, Australian officials said. And it moves the operation away from the turbulent part of the ocean known as the “Roaring Forties” to a region where Pattiaratchi said winds and currents are much calmer.
