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Kuala Lumpur — Malaysia, China and Australia have agreed to re-examine all data related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 to better pinpoint the search area, Malaysia’s acting transport minister said yesterday, as the hunt for the jet enters a new phase.
The three countries also agreed at a meeting in Canberra last week to undertake a survey to map the ocean floor and procure more deep-sea search vehicles and other equipment to scour it, minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
“I have briefed the Malaysia cabinet yesterday on the outcome of the meeting and it has been deliberated. I now have the mandate to announce that the details of the transition phase have been approved by the Malaysian government,” he said.
The Boeing 777 with 239 passengers and crew disappeared on 8 March during a scheduled service between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and is believed to have gone down in the Indian Ocean, off western Australia. About two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese nationals.
Australia would have responsibility for procuring new search assets from commercial contractors, Hishammuddin said, while Malaysia and China would assign additional equipment and services for the search.
Hishammuddin said he would discuss the possibility of more US technical help with US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel at a summit in Singapore later this month.
Hishammuddin said it was vital to carry out the undersea bathymetric survey to map the new search area so that the expensive and scarce deep-sea autonomous vehicles and towed sonar scanners could be deployed safely.
“It is important the bathymetric survey and deep water search needs to be seamless,” said Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister.
The three governments would hold weekly video conferences to coordinate the search, starting on Monday.
Based on groundbreaking analysis of satellite “pings” sent from the aircraft before it presumably crashed, searchers believed they knew the approximate position of wreckage of the plane some 1 550km northwest of Perth.
The search was further narrowed on the basis of acoustic signals believed to have come from the aircraft’s black box recorders before their batteries ran out.
A massive search operation involving satellites, aircraft, ships and sophisticated underwater equipment capable of scouring the ocean floor has failed to turn up any trace of the plane. — AFP
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