Malaysia Airlines MH370: No sign of debris forces search to move into new underwater phase

Updated

The Prime Minister has announced the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is entering a new phase, focusing on a larger underwater area.

Tony Abbott says it has been 52 days since the plane disappeared and it is now highly unlikely that any debris will be located on the ocean surface.

"By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become water-logged and sunk," he told reporters in Canberra.

"With the distances involved, all of the aircraft are operating at close to the limit of sensible and safe operation.

"Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area."

The Boeing 777, which was carrying 239 people, including six Australians, vanished on March 8.

Since then a massive multinational aerial and sea search effort has been undertaken.

Mr Abbott says that with an end to debris-spotting missions on the surface and from the air, sonar technology and contractors will be brought in to aid the expanded underwater search.

So far the unmanned submersible Bluefin-21 has scanned 400 square kilometres of ocean floor without finding any trace of the missing plane.

"While the search will be moving to a new phase in coming weeks, it certainly is not ending," Mr Abbott said.

"The Bluefin-21 submersible will continue in operation. What we are doing though is looking to an intensified underwater search involving different technology."

Retired Australian Defence chief Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search for MH370, says if everything goes perfectly it will take a minimum of eight months to examine the expanded search zone.

Air Chief Marshal Houston says he is confident authorities are looking in the right area.

"It will take time," he said. "I'd invite you all to just have a look at the French experience with their flight 447 - it took them two years to find the final resting place of that aircraft.

"We are getting into a very challenging task, as the Prime Minister said, probably the most demanding task in search terms that has ever been mounted to look for a lost aircraft."

New phase to cost as much as $60 million

The Prime Minister says the search's new phase, which will include commercial contractors, will cost "in the order of $60 million".

"Up [until] now, every nation has been bearing its own costs and, in the case of Australia, we have been essentially using Australian military assets, assets we would be paying for anyway," he said.

"No-one should underestimate the degree of responsibility that Australia has here, because this has happened in our search and rescue zone, and there were, after all, six Australia citizens and one Australian resident on that aircraft.

"We will be seeking some appropriate contributions from other nations involved, but we will ensure that this search goes ahead.

"I want the world to know that Australia will not shirk its responsibilities in this area.

"We owe it to the families, we owe it to the world to do whatever we reasonably can to get to the bottom of the mystery and we won't let them down."

Mr Abbott defended his decision to announce during a trip to China that searchers were within a few kilometres of finding the plane.

"Our way of operating at all times has been to release credible information as soon as we've had it so that we could be as transparent as possible," he said.

"We still have a considerable degree of confidence that the detections that were picked up using the equipment deployed from Ocean Shield were from a black box recorder.

"We are still baffled and disappointed that we haven't been able to find undersea wreckage based on those detections."

Air Chief Marshal Houston says acoustic analysis confirmed the device emitting the pings were man-made and from an emergency beacon and were "quietly optimistic" something was down there.

"That was the best information we had," he said.

Topics: air-and-space, accidents, australia, malaysia, act, wa, asia

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