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Search for MH370 looks set for next phase, says report

After almost seven fruitless week of searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, international agencies involved in the hunt are negotiating how to manage the next phase of the operation, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said in a report.

Malaysian and Australian officials are said to be hammering out a new agreement that will set out critical guidelines in the search for the missing aircraft.

The draft proposals specify that Australian air-safety experts would be responsible for downloading and interpreting data from the jet's black-box recorders, if they are found, and also spell out how any wreckage or human remains would be handled if retrieved from the Indian Ocean, the WSJ report cited Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, as saying.

Malaysian officials, expected to retain authority for public disclosure of black-box data and other important information about the focus of the probe, have declined to comment on the specifics of the pending memorandum of understanding.

Malaysian and Australian government officials are also discussing with representatives from several other nations on how to proceed if the current effort leads to another dead end.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said today that the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle had completed more than 90% of the focused underwater search area but it had yet to discover anything of interest.

If the mini-submarine failed to find anything significant, additional hardware are expected to be brought in and would probably include some different search technology and cover a significantly larger area, the WSJ report said.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had said that discussions with international partners were under way but no expansion of the search was likely until at least the end of the week.

Meanwhile, Australia's Defence Minister David Johnston had said that a different type of sonar system that has greater range but provides lower-resolution images would likely be deployed if the current search effort failed.

"The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water," he had said.

Even as nations discuss the management of the potential recovery effort, investigators are expected to once again reassess calculations of where the aircraft ended up, the WSJ report said.

The current search is based on the believe that the plane, which disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 with 239 people aboard, had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia after running out of fuel.

The current search area is based heavily on refined analysis of a series of so-called digital handshakes, or signal transmissions, between the jet and a commercial-communications satellite orbiting roughly 22,000 miles above the earth.

Investigators also have factored in military radar data, fuel-consumption projections and other variables to try to pinpoint the most likely place the jet entered the water.

Angus Houston, the former Australian defence chief heading the overall search, had previously stressed the painstaking nature of the effort, suggesting it could take many weeks or longer to show results.

"Nothing happens quickly when you get below the waves," he had told reporters, saying the search relies "on the best expertise in the world" and "we have the best equipment in the world out there."

The WSJ report said although officials had finished the preliminary factual report on flight MH370 required by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, Malaysia had not released a copy of the document, contrary to normal procedure in the US and other countries with large and experienced accident investigation agencies.

Hishammuddin, though, had indicated to reporters that Malaysia probably would have to make the report public in light of the extent of public interest.

Up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships are taking part in today’s search in the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling about 49,567 sq km.

The centre of the search area lies about 1,500km from Perth. – April 24, 2014.