Best leads for MH370 search will be exhausted in about a week, says Abbott

The best leads in the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 will be exhausted in about a week, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), as search efforts continue in the Indian Ocean.

Abbott said authorities would need to rethink their approach if the mini-submarine, Bluefin-21, which is scouring the seabed failed to locate the black boxes and wreckage of MH370.

"We believe that the search will be completed within a week or so," Abbott told WSJ."If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider."

Australian authorities have repeatedly cautioned that the search for the plane's wreckage will be long and difficult task.

Little is known about the seabed some 4.8 kilometres below the surface of the Indian Ocean. There have concerns that thick silt that may hide debris, including the black boxes, on the ocean floor and strong ocean currents may also slow the movements of the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle.

The yellow mini-submarine completed its first full mission on its third attempt, officials said today, and seabed data it retrieved was being analysed.

The first two attempts to scan the deep Indian Ocean off western Australia failed to produce any results.

The first dive began Monday night but aborted automatically after breaching the sub's maximum operating depth of 4,500 metres.

The second was launched Tuesday night and cut short yesterday morning due to unspecified "technical" troubles.

"Overnight Bluefin-21 AUV completed a full mission in the search area and is currently planning for its next mission," Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said.

So far, there have been no significant findings from the data gathered by the unmanned mini-submarine.

"My determination for Australia is that we will do whatever we reasonably can to resolve the mystery," Abbott told WSJ.

"If the current search turns up nothing, we won't abandon it, we will simply move to a different phase."

Abbott reiterated his confidence that searchers were looking in the right place for flight MH370, based on the electronic signals detected by equipment towed by Australian naval vessel ADV Ocean Shield on April 5 and April 8, around the time that the black boxes' 30-day battery life was due to expire.

Flight MH370 was carrying 239 passengers, including 153 people from China, when it disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

The search shifted to the southern Indian Ocean nine days later, soon after investigators realised that the Boeing 777-200ER could have flown on for several hours after losing civilian radar contact over the Gulf of Thailand.

Search of the sea surface has turned up only garbage so far.

WSJ also quoted Australia's Defence Minister David Johnston as saying in an interview that air and sea search for floating debris is nearing its end and any final decision will be made on advice from senior military and search officials.

"It is obviously becoming less and less optimistic," Johnston had said of the aerial search. Any potential debris field is likely to have "dissipated to the four winds," or sunk, he added.

A decision to call off the aerial search would allow nations to count the cost of their involvement up to now, the WSJ report said.

Officials have declined to put a total amount on what it has cost each country to deploy ships, aircraft and military crews to Australia to assist in the search effort.

Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the search operation, had said on Monday: "All of the countries that are contributing to this are running up big costs."

WSJ said authorities have several options available if the current underwater search by Bluefin-21 turns up nothing. They could order a second sweep of the seabed in a tight area where the first signals believed to have come from flight MH370's black boxes were detected.

The search could also be expanded to a wider area around a series of transmissions heard on four occasions covering 500 square miles. US Navy commanders have said a search on that scale could take six to eight weeks to complete.

Authorities are increasingly relying on private contractors as the focus of the search for flight MH370 shifts underwater, said WSJ.

Phoenix International Holdings Inc, a US-based technology company, already has a contract with the US Navy to provide underwater detection equipment, including the black box locator and Bluefin-21.

With authorities uncertain about the depths of the ocean, other organisations are ready to provide submersibles that can go deeper than Bluefin-21.

Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Australia's top air-accident investigator, said a prolonged undersea search and salvage mission using privately owned equipment could cost up to US$234 million (about RM757 million), WSJ reported.

Johnston also said that the underwater search may ultimately end up being run mainly by private companies, although he declined to estimate what that could cost.

"Ultimately it may well be that there is a civilian contractor to come and pick up the pieces if we have no success," WSJ quoted Johnston as saying.

Payment of search and salvage contractors would likely need to be negotiated between Malaysia, who operated the aircraft, the US, where the plane was built, and China, where the majority of passengers came from, Johnston said.

Meanwhile, a statement from the JACC said up to 10 military aircraft, two civil aircraft and 11 ships are assisting in today's search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Today, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling approximately 40,349 square kilometres. The centre of the search areas lies approximately 2,170 kilometres northwest of Perth, the statement said.

It also added that the oil sample collected by Ocean Shield on Monday has now arrived in Perth and will be subjected to detailed testing and analysis. – April 17, 2014.