Advertisement

Calls grow to rethink MH370 search area

Calls are growing for a review of the current search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, six weeks after the search failed to find any object related to the jet.

Bloomberg reported today that there was pessimism not only on the signals detected in the southern Indian Ocean, which were believed to be from the flight recorders of the plane, but also on the location where the plane was said to have ended its flight.

Peter Herzig, executive director of the German-based Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Oceanographic Research, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the absence of any surface debris could mean that the search area might be wrong.

He said signals picked by Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield could also have come from sources other than the plane's emergency beacons.

Herzig added that as an aircraft's contact with the ocean was similar to collision with concrete, "this should leave at least some debris floating, as was in the case with the Air France flight 447".

On April 7, Joint Agency Coordinating Centre (JACC) chief Angus Houston, who is overseeing the air and sea search operation, announced that two new signals detected by Ocean Shield as the "most promising lead" so far in the search for MH370.

Since then, several more signals were detected, but there has been no sign of any wreckage.

With no development, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein announced last week that the search may enter a "regroup and reconsideration phase".

The increasing frustration has led to a relative of one of the passengers to send an angry email questioning the credibility of the satellite analysis which concluded that flight MH370 had ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

Sara Bacj, whose partner, American passenger Philip Wood was aboard the plane, demanded an explanation from Putrajaya on why it went with the analysis by Inmarsat, the British satellite company.

"They have failed to share why they would accept a single source (Inmarsat) for analysis utilising a never-before-attempted method, as their sole grounds for determining that the plane is under the water and all lives lost," the Wall Street Journal quoted her email sent to the media.

The search for MH370 enters its 46th day today and the Australian agency coordinating the search in the Indian Ocean said that it had suspended air search activities today because of poor weather conditions. – April 22, 2014.