Failed call placed by Malaysia Airlines ground staff has been traced and supports Indian Ocean crash theory, say authorities

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Malaysia Airlines staff tried to contact the crew of missing flight MH370 by satellite phone after it disappeared from radar, Australian authorities have announced, with details about the failed call now being used to refine the suspected final path of the plane.

Australia’s deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, said analysis of the failed call to the plane, which disappeared on 8 March, “suggests to us that the aircraft might have turned south a little earlier than we had previously expected”.

The airliner disappeared with 239 people aboard after flying far off its original course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Based on a series of satellite signals from its automated systems, it is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia. The satellite phone call is a new and separate detail.



“After MH370 disappeared from the radar, Malaysia Airlines ground staff sought to make contact using a satellite phone. That was unsuccessful,” Truss said.

“But the detailed research that’s being done now has been able to … trace that phone call and help position the aircraft and the direction it was travelling.”

The minister said investigators still believed MH370 was somewhere on the search zone’s seventh arc, where its flight data communication systems emitted a final satellite “handshake”.

“It remains on the seventh arc – that is, there is a very, very strong view that this aircraft will be resting on the seventh arc,” he said.

Truss said ongoing mapping of 87,000 square kilometres of the ocean floor had uncovered “quite remarkable geographical features” including the discovery of new undersea volcanoes up to 2,000 metres (6,562ft) high.

“In one place in particular … the sea depth is as little as 600 metres and then falls away in just a very short distance to 6,600 metres,” he said.

Truss and the Malaysian transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday on co-operation in the search for the missing Boeing 777 as it progresses to the expensive next phase. The agreement shares the ongoing costs between the two countries.



Liow said investigators had advised that success of the undersea search for wreckage and the aircraft’s black boxes with cockpit voice recordings and flight data was crucial to solving the mystery of the disaster.

“The investigation cannot continue without the search result,” Liow said.

“We need to find the plane, we need to find the black box in the plane so that we can have a conclusion in the investigation.”

Malaysia, as the country where the Boeing 777 was flagged, has overall responsibility for the crash investigation. But Australia has search and rescue responsibility for the area of the Indian Ocean where the plane is thought to have crashed 1,800km (1,100 miles) off Western Australia.

A Dutch contractor, Fugro Survey, will conduct the underwater search for the Boeing 777 starting in September. Three vessels towing underwater vehicles equipped with side-scan sonar, multi-beam echo sounders and video equipment would search for the plane, Truss said.

Before the underwater search starts, two survey ships are mapping the entire search area. The overall search costing tens of millions of dollars could take up to a year, Truss said.

The Chinese vice-minister of transport, He Jianzhong, who also attended the Canberra meeting, said the ministers had all agreed that the search would not be interrupted or given up. The plan had 153 Chinese passengers, the most of any nationality on board.

The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report