MH370 Hunt: 'Low Confidence of Finding Anything,' Official
Says
BY ALASTAIR JAMIESON AND BILL NEELY
PERTH, Australia - The hunt for missing Flight MH370 could
“drag on for a long time” and even the new search zone may have to be reviewed,
officials said Tuesday in the gloomiest assessment to date of task ahead.
“This search and recovery operation is probably the most
challenging one I've ever seen,” said Angus Houston, head of the joint
Australian agency now coordinating the multinational search effort.
Houston promised the daunting search effort would continue “with
much vigor,” but he repeatedly emphasized the size of the task and downplayed
the usefulness of the radar and satellite data compiled by Malaysian
investigators.
"Essentially we do not have any precision in where the
aircraft entered the water"
“Inevitably if we don't find wreckage on the surface we are
eventually going to have to - probably in consultation with everyone who has a
stake in this - review what we do next,” he told reporters in Perth. “It will
take time. Not something that's necessarily going to be resolved in the next
two weeks for example.”
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He said recent estimates on the probable speed and altitude
of the missing plane, calculated using radar and satellite data were “a very
inexact science” – suggesting the search zone may change again as new
information comes to light. On Friday, the area was moved almost 700 miles
northwards based on revised estimates of where the plane might have crashed
into the sea.
“The search area is based on the best info available to us,”
Houston said. “Essentially we do not have any precision in where the aircraft
entered the water and that's why, if we can find a piece of wreckage, we will
then be able to narrow the search."
He added: “A lot of experts around the world are doing
computer modeling to try and determine where it might have ended up. An
aircraft has a very small fuel burn at high altitude so if it was flying at
40,000 feet, it would go a long way. We don't know what altitude the aircraft
was travelling at. We don't know what speed it was going at.”
Image: Angus Houston GREG WOOD / AFP - GETTY IMAGES
Angus Houston speaks about the missing Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH370 at a press conference in Perth on Tuesday.
That pessimistic analysis was echoed by Australian Maritime
Safety Authority’s deputy chief executive officer Mick Kinley, who said
satellite data from the new, revised search area had not yielded any more clues
in the investigation.
“We have not heard any satellite data [from the new area]
that has given anything better than low confidence of finding anything so far,”
he said.
Ten planes and nine ships were involved in Tuesday’s search
for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, with weather in the zone described as poor,
with areas of low visibility.
More equipment will join the effort in the coming days. The
Australian ship Ocean Shield has set sail for the zone, towing a U.S. Navy
"pinger locator" that will listen for signals from MH370’s black box.
It is expected to arrive on Thursday.
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Australia will also deploy a modified Boeing 737 to act as a
flying air traffic controller over the southern Indian Ocean to prevent a
mid-air collision among the aircraft involved in the search. The E-7A Wedgetail,
fitted with advanced radar, will be deployed "in the near future,"
Houston told reporters.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 vanished March 8 with 239
people on board after leaving Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Malaysia has been criticized for its handling of the search,
particularly its communications to the media and families of the passengers.
In a move likely to fuel those concerns, the government
changed its account of the final voice transmission from the cockpit. In a
statement late Monday, it said the final words received by ground controllers
at 1:19 a.m. on March 8 were "Good night Malaysian three-seven-zero."
Earlier the government said the final words were "All right, good
night." The statement didn't explain the discrepancy.
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