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A searcher on an Australian Navy ship on Monday. Australia’s prime minister said he was not considering ending Australian participation in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Credit Australian Defense Force, via Reuters
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Australia and Malaysia led an intensified multinational search on Monday for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean and prepared to deploy a submersible device to detect any pings from the aircraft’s flight data recorders, or black boxes, only days before their batteries are expected to die.
But in contending with a revised search area the size of Poland, there was no immediate indication the searchers were any closer to finding traces of the aircraft or its 239 passengers and crew members. The plane has now been missing for more than three weeks.
Although frustrations and costs have grown, Malaysian and Australian officials asserted they would keep searching indefinitely.
Malaysia has been under increasing pressure, particularly from relatives of Chinese passengers on the March 8 f Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight, to produce evidence of the plane’s fate. Most of the passengers were Chinese.
“We understand that it has been a difficult time for all the families, and we appreciate that many families want to see physical evidence before they will accept that MH370 ended in the south Indian Ocean,†Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister, said at a news conference here.
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Credit Azhar Rahim/European Pressphoto Agency
Investigation of Flight 370 to Continue
The Malaysian defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia said there is no time limit on the investigation of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
“We will continue with all our efforts to find MH370,†he said. “This is a promise that Malaysia intends to keep.â€
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia, whose country has been coordinating the search in the Indian Ocean, said that he was not considering ending Australian participation.
“We can keep searching for quite some time to come,†he said.
Ten planes and 11 ships were ordered to scour the latest search area, about 1,100 miles west of Perth, Australia. The Australian defense minister, David Johnston, said about 100 air personnel and 1,000 sailors were in the zone.
Additional ships were en route, expected to arrive within days, including an Australian naval vessel, the Ocean Shield, equipped to detect the pings of the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorders, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the government agency coordinating the search.
Capt. Mark Matthews, a supervisor of a team from the United States Navy that is involved in the search, said the effectiveness of the detection equipment would depend on “how effective we are at reducing that search area.â€
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Tracking Flight 370
The sequence of events known by the authorities, in local times.
Captain Matthews said the so-called pinger locator, towed behind the ship, was a batwing-shaped device with a microphone that could pick up signals from Flight 370’s data recorders.
The submersible can be deployed to map a debris field on the ocean floor using sonar, and then to use a camera to provide what Captain Matthews called “a full mosaic†of the debris field.
But the ping detector’s utility, in the absence of more specific information about the location of the wreckage, is doubtful. The device will be towed at an average speed of about three miles per hour, Captain Matthews said, and the submersible moves roughly three and a half miles per hour.
“Nothing is fast in underwater search,†Captain Matthews said.
Searchers say there is no time to waste: The pinger locator will be ineffective once the batteries powering the flight data recorders die, which is expected to happen next week.
Mr. Hishammuddin said the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, would travel to Pearce Air Force Base in Australia on Wednesday to thank the multinational force participating in the search and to view the efforts.
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The Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Australia announced on Friday that it had moved the search area nearly 700 miles to the northeast of an area it had been searching for about a week.Full Graphic »
Possible
flight paths
(based on different
speeds the plane may
have been traveling)
Planned search
area for March 31
Locations of objects spotted in aerial and
satellite images over the last two weeks
Possible
flight paths
(based on different
speeds the plane may
have been traveling)
Planned search
area for March 31
Locations of objects spotted in aerial and
satellite images over the last two weeks
Since Friday, when the search zone was shifted from an area about 700 miles south, aircraft have made daily sightings of floating objects. On closer inspection by crews on the ships, none of the items have been linked to the missing plane, a Boeing 777-200.
Two planes flying over the zone on Sunday spotted what Mr. Hishammuddin called “potential objects.†A ship in the area was sent to the spot on Monday to retrieve them, he said.
As a measure of how difficult it has been for spotters on the planes to classify objects in the ocean, crews on two ships pulled several objects from the rough waters on Saturday, raising hopes that the first physical evidence of the airliner had been found. But the items turned out to be “fishing equipment and other flotsam,†the Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement.
In Malaysia, more than two dozen relatives of Chinese passengers on Flight 370 arrived from China on Sunday to press Malaysian officials for more information about the investigation.
Mr. Hishammuddin reaffirmed on Monday that the Malaysian government intended to host the families at a briefing with high-level officials, and said the meeting would be broadcast to Beijing for relatives of passengers there.
The Malaysian government has endured withering criticism from the relatives and friends of Chinese passengers, both in Malaysia and in China, who have accused officials of withholding information about the disappearance of the plane and not doing enough to find it.
The group that arrived Sunday protested at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur and demanded an apology from the Malaysian government for declaring last week that the plane had ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean, saying there was insufficient evidence to support that conclusion.
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