Australia confident of finding MH370, ten months after jet disappeared
Fourth vessel to be added to fleet searching for missing Malaysia Airlines jet should boost prospects of recovery, research team head says
Missing airliner MH370 is “very likely” to be found if it lies in the undersea zone now being scoured, and is probably in good condition despite being submerged for 10 months, the Australian search chief told reporters.
Three vessels, with a fourth on the way, are probing the depths of the Indian Ocean off western Australia where the Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese, is believed to have crashed.
“It’s very likely we will find the aircraft, but we don’t know exactly where”
The jet disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 and apart from some mysterious satellite “pings” interpreted as plotting its southern course, no sign of it has been found despite a massive air and sea operation.
Relatives of those on board have endured a long wait for answers on what happened to their loved ones, with their torment reawakened by AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashing into the sea off Indonesia on December 28.
So far, one quarter of the priority underwater search area of 60,000 square kilometres has been checked, while a wider zone of 208,000 square kilometres has been mapped.
“Our satellite calculations gave us an area we determined was high priority,” Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the search, told reporters.
