MH370: Australia rules out main search zone Government announces plane is not in part of Indian Ocean where searchers previously reported ‘pings’ from black box
The missing Malaysia Airlines plane is not in the Indian Ocean search zone where underwater “pings” were detected, the Australian search authorities have announced, after a US navy officer cast doubt on whether the signals were from a plane’s black box flight recorder.
On a day of dramatic developments, the Australian Transport Safety Buereau (ATSB) said it had finished searching the area and declared that it “can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370”.
An underwater search vehicle, Bluefin-21, has scoured more than 850 square kilometres of the Indian ocean west of Perth since four acoustic signals – thought to have been emitted by the missing aircraft’s black box flight recorders – were detected by a towed pinger locator in April.
But the search has failed to turn up any sign of the plane, which went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to beijing on 8 March with 239 people on board.
“The joint agency co-ordination centre can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the autonomous underwater vehicle since it joined the search effort,” search authorities said.
“The search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and, in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370.”
Australia’s deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, told parliament in Canberra on Thursday that the search would move into a new phase beginning in August that could take 12 months.
“The pings were the best information available at the time and that is all you can do,” he said.
“We are still very confident that the resting place of the aircraft is in the southern [Indian] Ocean and along the seventh ping line,” he added, refering to an arc identified by analysis of satellite communications data from UK company Inmarsat. The search area would now be extended to a 60,000sq km zone along the arc. The ocean floor would be mapped to help the search.
The team was “still confident” that the plane would be found and were “determined” to do so, he said.
The statements came after claims by a senior US navy officer earlier in the day that the four acoustic signals may have been produced by the search vessel and wrongly identified as black box signals.
ON TASMANIAN TIMES:
• First book on MH370 mystery blames US war games
• Why the Official Explanation of MH370’s Demise Doesn’t Hold Up
• MH370: Simulation stymied as it all gets curiouser and curiouser
• Where is it? MH370 Flight To Be Simulated
• MH 370 debris … ? Just as John Hawkins predicted on TT … ?
• An interim report on the state of play regarding MH 370
