Missing flight MH370: Search 'could take a year' Skip to main content

Missing flight MH370: Search 'could take a year'

Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein (C), Chief Coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston (Ret'd) and Mr Jean-Paul Troadec, President of the French Aviation Accident Investigation Bureau hold a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on 2 May 2014 Angus Houston (4th from L) said an "effective search" would find the plane,

MH370 mystery

The official leading the hunt for the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 says a full search of the suspected crash area could take up to a year. 

Speaking in Malaysia, Angus Houston said he was confident an "effective search" would find the plane.

Officials from Australia, China and Malaysia will meet in Canberra next week to discuss the ongoing search.

On Thursday a report revealed a four-hour gap between MH370's disappearance and the start of a search operation.

The preliminary report, from Malaysia's transport ministry, also revealed that air traffic controllers did not realise the plane was missing until 17 minutes after it disappeared off radar.

The plane, carrying 239 people, disappeared over the South China Sea as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Nurlaila Binti Ngah, wife of chief steward Wan Swaid Wan Ismail: "We just wanted our husbands back"

Officials believe it ended its journey in seas west of the Australian city of Perth, thousands of kilometres off course, but do not yet know why. An intensive multinational search has so far turned up no sign of the plane.

Earlier this week, Australia announced that the operation was entering a new phase, after an initial search of the area where acoustic signals thought to be from "black box" flight recorders were heard found nothing.

'Totally committed' Next week's meeting in Australia will help determine what happens next.

"That's a very important meeting because it will formalise the way ahead to ensure that this search continues with urgency and doesn't stop at any stage," said Mr Houston, a retired Air Chief Marshal.

The aerial search for floating wreckage has been called off. The search of the sea floor will be expanded in the area where officials believe - based on satellite data - that the plane crashed.
File image of Bluefin-21 robotic submersible, deployed from Australian vessel Ocean Shield The Bluefin-21 robotic submersible is continuing to scour the sea floor for wreckage
"The search will take probably in the order of eight months, maybe eight to 12 months if we have bad weather or other issues," Mr Huston said.

"But we're totally committed to find MH370 and I'm confident that with an effective search we will eventually find the aircraft."

Late on Thursday, Malaysian officials released their preliminary report on the missing airliner.

According to the draft, Vietnamese air traffic controllers contacted their counterparts in Kuala Lumpur at 01:38 to say MH370 was missing, 17 minutes after it disappeared off radar.

The official search-and-rescue operation was launched four hours later, at 05:30.
The report also recommended the introduction of real-time tracking of commercial air transport, saying there had now been two recent occasions when large planes had gone missing with their last position unclear - MH370 and Air France Flight 447 in 2009.
"This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner," the report noted.

There is no requirement from the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO), the UN body that oversees global aviation, for real-time tracking.

Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, has asked relatives of passengers to leave the hotel accommodation it has been providing and go home.

The airline said it was "deeply sympathetic to the continuing unimaginable anguish, distress and hardship suffered by those with loved ones on board the flight".

But it warned that the continuing search would be a "prolonged process" and said relatives should wait for updates "within the comfort of their own homes".
Ocean off the coast of Australia


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27250078

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chronology of the Press in Burma

1836 – 1846 * During this period the first English-language newspaper was launched under British-ruled Tenasserim, southern  Burma . The first ethnic Karen-language and Burmese-language newspapers also appear in this period.     March 3, 1836 —The first English-language newspaper,  The Maulmain Chronicle , appears in the city of Moulmein in British-ruled Tenasserim. The paper, first published by a British official named E.A. Blundell, continued up until the 1950s. September 1842 —Tavoy’s  Hsa-tu-gaw  (the  Morning Star ), a monthly publication in the Karen-language of  Sgaw ,  is established by the Baptist mission. It is the first ethnic language newspaper. Circulation reached about three hundred until its publication ceased in 1849. January 1843 —The Baptist mission publishes a monthly newspaper, the Christian  Dhamma  Thadinsa  (the  Religious Herald ), in Moulmein. Supposedly the first Burmese-language newspaper, it continued up until the first year of the second Angl
Post a Comment
Read more

ARSA claims ambush on Myanmar security forces

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Sunday claimed responsibility for an ambush on Myanmar security forces that left several wounded in northern Rakhine state, the first attack in weeks in a region gutted by violence. Rakhine was plunged into turmoil last August, when a series of ARSA raids prompted a military backlash so brutal the UN says it likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority. The army campaign sent some 650,000 Rohingya fleeing for Bangladesh, where refugees have given harrowing accounts of rape, murder and arson at the hands of security forces and vigilantes. Myanmar's military, which tightly controls information about Rakhine, denies any abuses and insists the crackdown was a proportionate response to crush the "terrorist" threat. ARSA have launched few attacks in recent months.  But the army reported that "about ten" Rohingya terrorists ambushed a car with hand-made mines and gunfire on Friday morning
Post a Comment
Read more

Thai penis whitening trend raises eyebrows

Image copyright LELUXHOSPITAL Image caption Authorities warn the procedure could be quite painful A supposed trend of penis whitening has captivated Thailand in recent days and left it asking if the country's beauty industry is taking things too far. Skin whitening is nothing new in many Asian countries, where darker skin is often associated with outdoor labour, therefore, being poorer. But even so, when a clip of a clinic's latest intriguing procedure was posted online, it quickly went viral. Thailand's health ministry has since issued a warning over the procedure. The BBC Thai service spoke to one patient who had undergone the treatment, who told them: "I wanted to feel more confident in my swimming briefs". The 30-year-old said his first session of several was two months ago, and he had since seen a definite change in the shade. 'What for?' The original Facebook post from the clinic offering the treatment, which uses lasers to break do
1 comment
Read more