SYDNEY , MAY 06 -
An international panel of experts will re-examine all data gathered in
the nearly two-month hunt for the missing Malaysia jet to ensure search
crews who have been scouring a desolate patch of ocean for the plane
have been looking in the right place, officials said Monday.
Senior officials from Malaysia, Australia and China met in the
Australian capital to hash out the details of the next steps in the
search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which will center on an
expanded patch of seafloor in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The area became the focus of the hunt after a team of analysts
calculated the plane's likeliest flight path based on satellite and
radar data.
Starting Wednesday, that data will be re-analyzed and combined with all
information gathered thus far in the search, which hasn't turned up a
single piece of debris despite crews scouring more than 4.6 million
square kilometers (1.8 million square miles) of ocean.
"We've got to this stage of the process where it's very sensible to go
back and have a look at all of the data that has been gathered, all of
the analysis that has been done and make sure there's no flaws in it,
the assumptions are right, the analysis is right and the deductions and
conclusions are right," Angus Houston, head of the search operation,
told reporters in Canberra.
Investigators have been stymied by a lack of hard data since the plane
vanished on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A
weekslong search for surface debris was called off last week after
officials determined any wreckage that may have been floating has likely
sunk.
"Unfortunately, all of that effort has found nothing," Australian
Transport Minister Warren Truss said. "We've been confident on the basis
of the information provided that the search area was the right one, but
in practice, that confidence has not been converted into us discovering
any trace of the aircraft."
Houston has warned that the underwater search may drag on for up to a year.
Houston and Truss met with Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin
Hussein and Chinese Transport Minister Yang Chuantang in Canberra on
Monday to map out the next steps of the underwater search, which will
focus on a 60,000 square kilometer (23,000 square mile) patch of
seafloor. Officials are contacting governments and private contractors
to find out whether they have specialized equipment that can dive deeper
than the Bluefin 21, an unmanned sub that has spent weeks scouring the
seafloor in an area where sounds consistent with a plane's black box
were detected in early April.
The Bluefin can dive only to depths of 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) — and
parts of the search zone are likely deeper than that. Adding to the
difficulties is the fact no one really knows exactly how deep the water
in the search area is.
"I don't know that anyone knows for sure, because it's never been
mapped," Truss said, adding that detailed mapping of the seafloor will
be a key focus of the next phase of the search.
In addition to deeper diving capabilities, the new equipment will be
able to send information back to crews in real time. The Bluefin's data
can be downloaded only after it returns to the surface following each of
its 16-hour dives.
It will likely take another two months before any new equipment is in
the water, Truss said. The Bluefin will continue to be used in the
meantime, though its search is currently on hold while the ship Ocean
Shield, which has the sub on board, is taking on supplies at a base in
Western Australia.
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