THE federal government remains convinced missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will be found in the south Indian Ocean despite revelations that four sets of signals believed to be from the plane were not from its black box recorders.
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told parliament that a fresh hunt for the aircraft by experienced commercial operators would begin in August.
But he conceded that hopes had been dashed of finding the aircraft in the 800sq km of sea floor, the recent focus of the Australian-led search.
Searchers armed with sophisticated deep-water salvage gear will now cover a massive area of ocean floor of close to 60,000sq km, some of it more than 5km deep.
The government’s confirmation followed comments by Michael Dean, the US Navy deputy director of ocean engineering, that authorities believed the pings emanated from something other the aircraft’s black boxes.
Mr Dean told CNN the pings could have been produced by the ship or even by electronics in the towed pinger locator itself.
In the May budget, the Abbott government earmarked more than $90 million of Defence and other funding for the search for the aircraft which vanished on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
No trace of it has been found despite a massive search.
The search was focused on the southern Indian Ocean after scientists from the communications giant Inmarsat announced that one of their satellites had picked up a series of six tiny signals from the aircraft engines.
Those signals indicated the plane was still flying for about six hours after it was thought to have crashed.
A seventh, partial “ping” was picked up.
That was believed to have been a signal sent when the jet ran out of fuel and its engines flamed out.
From that data an area was worked out where the aircraft was considered likely to have crashed into the sea.
A so-called “pinger locator” towed behind the Royal Australian Navy vessel Ocean Shield quickly picked up the four sets of signals that the searchers said matched those from beacons attached to black boxes.
The US Navy’s unmanned and remote-controlled mini-submarine, Bluefin-21, was sent down into that area. The search co-ordinator, former Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, and Tony Abbott announced that they were hopeful of finding the wreckage soon.
Yesterday Mr Truss said the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre had confirmed that after scouring more than 800sq km of ocean floor about 4.5km deep, the Bluefin found nothing.
“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and, in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” the co-ordination centre said.
That leaves the searchers to cover an area of 56,000sq km based on a strip 800km long and 70km wide that co-ordinators believe was on MH370’s flight path.
Air Chief Marshall Houston has told The Australian that all the data relevant to the search was being examined and peer reviewed to ensure its accuracy. The JACC has ordered a technical survey of the ocean floor, expected to take three months.
source: theaustralian.com.au
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 