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Australia Says Air Search for Debris From Missing Jet Will End Australia Says Air Search for Debris From Missing Jet Will End
(about 5 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia announced on Monday an end to the search by air for debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, but he said the undersea search would be expanded. SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia announced on Monday an end to the search by air for debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but he said the underwater search would be intensified and expanded.
“It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface,” Mr. Abbott said at a news briefing in Canberra, the capital. “By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk.” “It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface,” Mr. Abbott said at a news briefing in Canberra, the capital. “By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk. Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area.”
“Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area,” he said. “We are going to enter a new phase of search focusing under the sea.” Mr. Abbott said that while the United States Navy’s Bluefin-21 submersible vehicle would continue to search the ocean floor for wreckage from the jet, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people onboard, the search coordinators were arranging to hire private contractors that would use a different type of equipment. The next phase of the search could take six to eight months, he said.
Mr. Abbott stressed that the search was not ending. “Enormous efforts have been made, enormous efforts will continue to be made,” he said. “This is an extraordinary mystery, we will do everything we can reasonably do to resolve it.” “What we are doing is looking to an intensified underwater search involving different technology, in particular using specialized side-scan sonar equipment towed behind ships to scan the seabed for evidence of aircraft wreckage,” Mr. Abbott said. “While the search will be moving to a new phase in coming weeks, it certainly is not ending.”
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 veered off course on March 8 during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 passengers and crew members on board. Satellite data later indicated that the plane had headed south and crashed in the Indian Ocean. The strongest lead found to date regarding the plane’s specific location has been four acoustic signals that were detected about 1,000 miles off the coast of the state of Western Australia. The authorities said the technology being envisioned for the new phase had advantages over the Bluefin-21, which must be recovered and its data downloaded every 20 hours. The Bluefin-21 was better suited to work with the pinger locator towed by the Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield. Towed sonar can cover a larger area, picking up imagery in a way not possible with the autonomous underwater vehicle.
No debris has been found that could be linked to the flight. “We have not found anything anywhere” related to the jet, Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search, said at the briefing Monday. Mr. Abbott’s announcement followed the failure of the Bluefin-21 to find any sign of the plane’s wreckage on the seabed despite 16 deep-sea missions in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles off the coast of the state of Western Australia.
Mr. Abbott said the authorities would widen the underwater search, employing commercial contractors and using different technology, including towed sonar. To date, the seabed search has primarily used a Bluefin-21 submersible that has been scouring the seabed up to 2.8 miles below the ocean’s surface. Flight 370 veered off course on March 8 during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, for reasons that remain unknown. Satellite data later indicated that the plane had headed south, and searchers believe it crashed in the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Houston said the best lead remained the acoustic signals, which authorities believe to have come from the flight’s so-called black boxes, or data recorders. The Bluefin-21 was searching in a circle around where, on April 8, the authorities last detected what they believe to have been an acoustic ping from one of the jet’s so-called black boxes, or data recorders. No debris has been found that could be linked to the flight.
Mr. Abbott said experts currently working in Kuala Lumpur would re-examine the likely impact zone of the plane, thought to be an area of about 435 miles by 50 miles. “We will search it all,” Mr. Abbott said. “That is obviously going to take quite a few months.” The search coordinators say the most reliable clues to the jet’s whereabouts were transmissions from the aircraft’s engines, before they ceased to operate, and the acoustic signals picked up by the pinger locator in April. Mr. Abbott said the authorities remained confident that those signals came from the jet. “We are still baffled and disappointed that we have not been able to find undersea wreckage based on those detections,” he said.
Mr. Houston said that under perfect conditions, a thorough search of the expanded area of seabed could be completed in eight months. The next phase of the search, he said, will involve further consultation over the zone where the plane is believed to have hit the ocean. Experts from the United States, Malaysia, China, Britain and Australia, currently working from Kuala Lumpur, will be asked “to reconsider exactly what they think is the most likely probable impact zone based on the data we’ve got and the reflections that they have inevitably had over the last few weeks on all of this,” he said.
“Then we are going to methodically, carefully, to the very best of the ability of contemporary technology, search the entire probable impact zone,” estimated to be about 435 miles by 50 miles, Mr. Abbott said. “We will search it all. That’s obviously going to take quite a few months depending upon the weather, depending upon how quickly equipment can be deployed.”
The depth of the ocean, in some places 2.8 miles, and a deep layer of silt, along with a lack of available oceanographic detail for the seafloor, has complicated the effort. Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search, said that regardless of the depth of the silt, the authorities would still expect to see some wreckage lying on top of it. “Thus far, we haven’t seen anything,” he said.
Ships from Australia, China and Malaysia will continue maritime operations while contracts with commercial operators are drawn up. The search costs for the next phase are estimated to be around $56 million, Mr. Abbott said. Some costs will be borne by Australia but other nations will make appropriate contributions, he said.
“I want the families to know, I want the world to know, Australia won’t shirk its responsibilities in this area,” Mr. Abbott said. “While the search will be moving to a new phase in coming weeks, it certainly is not ending.”
“Enormous efforts have been made, enormous efforts will continue to be made,” he said. “This is an extraordinary mystery, we will do everything we can reasonably do to resolve it.”