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| Missing flight MH370: Submersible to begin undersea search | |
| (31 minutes later) | |
| Teams searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are to deploy a submersible for the first time. | Teams searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are to deploy a submersible for the first time. |
| Search chief Angus Houston said the Bluefin-21 drone would be sent down as soon as possible to search for wreckage on the sea floor. | |
| Teams have been using a towed pinger locator to listen for signals from the plane's "black box" flight recorders. | |
| But no new signals have been heard since 8 April, amid concerns the flight recorders' batteries have expired. | |
| Flight MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board. It was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it lost contact with air traffic controllers over the South China Sea. | Flight MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board. It was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it lost contact with air traffic controllers over the South China Sea. |
| Malaysian officials believe, based on satellite data, that it ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres off course. | |
| An international search has focused on waters west of the Australian city of Perth. | |
| Air Chief Marshall Houston, who heads the joint agency co-ordinating the search effort, said that given no signals had been detected in six days, it was time to go underwater. | |
| The Bluefin-21 will search for wreckage in an area defined by four acoustic signals heard last week. | |
| Officials believe those signals - picked up by the pinger locator towed by an Australian vessel - were consistent with flight recorders. | |
| "Analysis of the four signals has allowed the provisional definition of a reduced and manageable search area on the ocean floor," ACM Houston said. | |
| "The experts have therefore determined that the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 as soon as possible.'' | |
| He warned that the submersible search would be a long, "painstaking" process that might, in the end, yield no results. |