An international team hunting for the missing Malaysian passenger jet is trawling the last third of a search zone for wreckage after an unmanned submarine failed to find traces of the aircraft.
The Bluefin-21, which bounces sound waves off the Indian Ocean floor to create images of the seabed, has scoured two-thirds of the targeted area without establishing any "contacts of interest," according to the Australian agency coordinating the effort. The submarine is currently completing its ninth mission, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in an e-mailed statement today.
The submarine, named Artemis after the Greek goddess of the hunt, is diving within a 10-kilometer (6-mile) radius of where audio signals were detected on April 8. No pulses have been heard since then and authorities say the batteries in the aircraft's black boxes have probably expired.
As many as 10 military aircraft and 10 ships will search about 49,491 square kilometers of ocean off the coast of Western Australia today for debris from the aircraft, which went missing March 8 with 239 people on board, Australia's JACC by e-mail.
No physical trace of the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) jet has been found as the search enters its 46th day -- the longest hunt for a missing passenger plane in modern aviation history.
Total Blank
Search crews hunting for the wreck may need to review the area of focus again because the absence of any surface debris suggests the correct location has still not been identified, the German oceanographer who helped find the remains of Air France (AF) 447, said last week.
The optimisim injected into the search after pinger signals were picked up may also prove ill-founded because the sounds could have come from sources other than the emergency beacons, said Peter Herzig, executive director of the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Oceanographic Research in Kiel, Germany.
With all the planes and ships combing the Indian ocean for signs of debris, it's unusual to draw a total blank, Herzig said. Given that the force of an aircraft hitting the ocean is similar to collision with concrete, this should leave at least some debris floating, as was in the case with the Air France 447 plane en route from Rio to Paris in 2009, he said.
Finding the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders are key to determining why the Boeing Co. 777-200ER jet vanished. Flight 370's disappearance has baffled authorities because contact was lost less than an hour into a routine trip to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
Police Investigation
The widebody plane vanished from civilian radars while headed north over the Gulf of Thailand, then doubled back and flew over Peninsular Malaysia and on into some of the world's most remote waters.
While the motive behind that heading remains unknown, MH370 was deliberately steered south on a path ending in the Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said.
Malaysian police are continuing with their investigations and have interviewed 260 people so far, Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said in a text message yesterday.
"Investigations are still on-going and nothing can be revealed yet," he said. "We will investigate as long as it takes to find out what really happened."
Malaysia readying to issue death certificates
The Malaysian government is getting ready to issue death certificates for passengers on the missing MH370 and provide financial assistance to families while search efforts continue on the 46th day since the plane's disappearance.
Malaysia Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainudin on Sunday told a press conference that they will be fair to all relatives of everyone onboard the plane.
"When we talk about financial assistance, we have to be fair with everybody," he said.
"The only discussion currently is to the next of kin in Malaysia and to representative from China. So, we don't only talk to Malaysia next of kin. We'll talk to everybody."
Reuters and Malaysian media reported the government will issue death certificates to relatives even though no bodies have been discovered.
Although a body is usually needed for authorities to issue a death certificate, Malaysian courts might still declare people onboard MH370 are presumed dead as early as next week, Malaysian media outlet Malay Mail Online reported Monday.
The move from the Malaysian government has triggered the anger of relatives.
"We believe that until they have conclusive proof that the plane crashed with no survivors, they have no right to attempt to settle this case with death certificates and final payoffs," a relatives group said in an e-mail to the Global Times late Sunday.
"We don't expect that they will find all of the plane, or all of the bodies, or even that they know everything about how this surreal situation happened, but we do expect at least a tiny bit of concrete evidence."
Hamzah said assistance would come from Malaysia Airlines, with the government to bear some of the costs. He would travel to Beijing soon in a bid to ensure that bilateral ties between Malaysia and China would not be affected by the incident.
A tropical cyclone was threatening to hamper the search for the plane in remote Indian Ocean on Monday, as a submarine drone neared the end of its mission.
A US navy remote-controlled submarine, the Bluefin-21, was on its ninth mission scanning the largely unmapped stretch of sea bed where the pings are believed to have come from, with still no trace found, Australian search officials said on Monday.
MH370 probe team: Missing jet may have landed somewhere else
Members of the International Investigation Team (IIT) who have been putting their heads together since day one to find Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are now looking at the likelihood of starting from scratch in hopes of finally solving this unprecedented aviation mystery, Malaysia-based newspaper the New Straits Times reported.
Sources within the team that is based in Kuala Lumpur told the New Straits Times that among areas they were revisiting was the possibility that the Boeing jetliner had landed somewhere else, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean, the report said. >> More
