Search for Malaysian jet returns to original area

DPA

Sydney

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will return to an area 1,800 kilometres west of Perth that was first searched three months ago, it was reported yesterday.

The area was previously only searched by air looking for wreckage before the search moved further north.

But experts have now concluded that the more southern area represents the “highest probability” of where the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean on March 8.

Examination of new data prompted the return to the area, according to Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, speaking to the broadcaster ABC.

The Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, the Australian group in charge of the Indian Ocean search, will announce next week that the undersea search will shift focus to the original area 800 kilometres south of the area examined when pings were heard, the West Australian newspaper reported yesterday. 

The search area is within the so-called “seventh arc,” an area based on satellite contacts with the Boeing 777 as it flew south. A Dutch ocean floor mapping vessel, Fugro Equator, is already working in the more southern zone and will soon be joined by a Chinese navy vessel, Zhu Kezhen. The ships will map the ocean floor six kilometres below the surface for the next three months before a new contractor begins a deep-sea side-scan sonar search for the plane with equipment that is more sophisticated than the Bluefin sonar used earlier.

It could take up to 12 months to map the 60,000-square-kilometre search area. The ocean floor in the search area is particularly rough, according to Rob Luijnenburg, strategy co-ordinator on the Fugro Equator.

“The area has mountains, ridges, valleys and you can’t see a lot down there unless you make it visible with technology,” he told ABC