The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumed in earnest Saturday as surveillance planes returned to the skies above a newly defined search area in the southern Indian Ocean and spotted floating debris for the second day in a row, and a flotilla of vessels began arriving in the zone to find and identify the objects, the Australian authorities said.
Crews on two of the ships pulled several items from the water, but investigators determined that the objects were not from the missing plane, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is overseeing the search.
With several more ships en route to the zone late Saturday, the naval contingent of the multinational search force trying to locate the Boeing 777-200 was expected to reach a total of nine vessels by Sunday. A frigate from the Royal Australian Navy was also heading to the area and was scheduled to arrive Tuesday.
Two aircraft flying over the new search area Saturday - one from the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force and the other from the Royal Australian Air Force - spotted floating debris. Five aircraft flying over the zone Friday also spotted unidentified objects.
But officials involved in the search, mindful of the amount of detritus adrift in the world's oceans, cautioned that the sightings were inconclusive on their own.
"It is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is ordinarily there," the Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement.
A new analysis of radar data from the morning of March 8, as Flight 370 veered off its intended route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and instead flew west over Peninsular Malaysia and then south over the Indian Ocean, compelled officials to shift the search area Friday to a zone about 1,100 miles west of Perth, Australia.
The analysis showed that the plane was moving faster than investigators had previously estimated and therefore it would have burned fuel more quickly and possibly fallen into the Indian Ocean farther north than previously believed, officials said.
The new search area is about 700 miles northeast of a zone that had been the focus of search efforts for most of the week.
The revision of the search area was based largely on work done by analysts from Boeing in Seattle, part of an international team of experts collaborating with Malaysian investigators, officials here said.
They arrived at their conclusions after re-evaluating the radar data and weighing other factors such as the amount of fuel on the plane when it took off from Kuala Lumpur and its altitude as it headed over the south Indian Ocean, Malaysian officials added, offering no further elaboration.
The new search area presents more favorable conditions for the search than the previous area, in part because it has less inclement weather and water conditions and is closer to Perth, the departure point for the search planes, officials said.
It is also only a fifth of the size of the previous search area, though still large: 123,000 square miles, or 319,000 square kilometers, which is roughly the size of New Mexico or Poland.
But Australian and Malaysian officials cautioned that the new zone also posed considerable challenges.
"We are trying to find small bits of wreckage in a vast ocean," said Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia. "And while we are throwing everything we have at it, the task goes on."
As the search was underway Saturday, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister, stopped by a hotel near Kuala Lumpur to meet with the relatives of Chinese citizens who were aboard Flight 370. The Malaysian government has endured withering criticism by the relatives and friends of Chinese passengers, who have accused it of withholding information about the disappearance of the plane and not doing enough to find it.
Speaking to reporters after the closed-door meeting, Hishammuddin said the families wanted assurances that the search-and-rescue operation would continue.
"As long as there is even a remote chance of a survivor, we will pray and do whatever it takes," he said, adding, "This is t
No comments:
Post a Comment