Underwater scanners that will be used to try to locate the black box flight recorders from the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have arrived at the search headquarters in
Australia, as crews pin their hopes on new satellite images showing 300 pieces of possible debris in the southern Indian Ocean.
The
new information came as strong winds and icy weather forced planes and
ships to call off their search on Thursday of an area where officials
believe the plane came down almost three weeks ago.
Australian
maritime officials said several planes had reached the search zone,
located about 1,550 miles (2,500 km) south-west of Perth, but had
returned early without finding any of the floating debris.
Sam
Cardwell, a spokesman for the Australian maritime safety authority, said
the planes had stayed in the area for about two hours. "They got a bit
of time in, but it was not useful because there was no visibility," he
said.
The bad weather is expected to last well into Friday,
raising the possibility that the hunt for hundreds of pieces of debris
that could be from MH370 will not resume until the weekend.
The
arrival of sensitive tracking equipment offers a glimmer of hope for a
breakthrough in what has become the biggest mystery in commercial
aviation history.
An Australian naval vessel ship will sweep the seabed by
towing an underwater listening device
deep below the surface in the hope of picking up an ultrasonic signal
from one or both of the plane's black box recorders, while a small
submersible drone will be used to scan the sea floor for signs of
wreckage.
Thursday's search involved 11 planes and five ships in an
area of the vast southern Indian Ocean where officials believe the plane
ran out of fuel and crashed, killing all 239 people aboard.
They
were trying to locate 122 objects captured in French satellite images on
23 March that senior Malaysian officials described as the most credible
lead yet as to the jetliner's whereabouts.
Later on Thursday,
Thailand said it had satellite images showing 300 floating objects
floating in roughly the same area. The objects, ranging in length from
two to 15 metres, were found about 125 miles from the site where the
French satellite had earlier spotted more than 100 pieces of debris.
Anond
Snidvongs, executive director of Thailand's space technology
development agency, said the information had been passed on to
Malaysia. "But we cannot – dare not – confirm they are debris from the plane," he told AFP.
Officials
from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Thursday's search
had been split into two areas totalling 78,000 sq km (30,000 square
miles). The operation involves planes and ships from the US,
China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Locating
and retrieving at least some of the floating objects could prove
crucial in the absence of any physical evidence supporting the theory
that MH370 ran out of fuel hours after it turned sharply off course and
disappeared from air traffic controllers' screens over the South China
Sea en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Search teams are hoping
that the detection equipment will be able to pick up acoustic pings
emitted every second from the plane's black box flight data recorder and
cockpit voice recorder.
Each of the two recorders has a beacon,
attached to the outside of the black box, which once activated by
contact with water makes a sound every second.
But it is a race
against time: the beacons have a battery life of 30 days, after which
the pings begin to fade. Chuck Schofield of Dukane Seacom, a company
that has sold the pingers to Malaysia Airlines, told Associated Press
that the batteries might last an additional five days before dying.
Assuming
that the plane crashed on 8 March, as Malaysian officials insist, that
means the beacons aboard MH370 will begin to fade around 7 April and
could go silent around 12 April.
The US navy tracking equipment – a
special listening device known as a "towed pinger locator" and an
underwater drone dubbed Bluefin-21 – has arrived in Perth, where the
international effort is based and is being sent to the search site.
Reports
said the equipment would be loaded on to the Australian navy's HMAS
Ocean Shield, which will drag the locator through the water in the hope
of picking up a signal.
The drone can dive to depths of about
4,500 metres, using sonar to form images of the ocean floor. Similar
technology was used to locate the main wreckage from Air France flight
447 in 2011 – yet it still took searchers two years to recover the black
box from the depths of the Atlantic.
The operation has been
hampered by bad weather and conditions, prolonging the anguish of
relatives after Malaysian officials said they had concluded that the
aircraft had crashed into the sea with the loss of all on board.
Experts
said search crews faced significant dangers due to frequent bad weather
and the area's distance from land. "This is a really rough piece of
ocean, which is going to be a terrific issue," Kerry Sieh, director of
the Earth Observatory of Singapore, told Associated Press. "I worry that
people carrying out the rescue mission are going to get into trouble."
Criticism
of the Malaysian authorities' handling of the incident has continued,
with relatives of the 154 Chinese passengers on board MH370 ridiculing
Malaysian government and airline officials at a meeting in Beijing on
Wednesday.
On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines ran a full-page message
of condolence in the New Straits Times. "Our sincerest condolences go
out to the loved ones of the 239 passengers, friends and colleagues.
Words alone cannot express our enormous sorrow and pain," it said.
Chinese insurance companies have started paying compensation to the families of passengers, according to Xinhua.
Several
Chinese celebrities took to social media to voice anger at the
Malaysian government. In a widely shared post on Sina Weibo, China's
version of Twitter, the singer and actor Chen Kun said he would boycott
Malaysian goods, while the Hong Kong-born actor Deric Wan called for
evidence that the plane had crashed.
"What Chinese people wanted
was the truth of the missing plane instead of a pointless press
conference," he said on Weibo, according to China Daily.
But in an
opinion piece in Thursday's Global Times, Wang Wenwen said that while
Malaysia had handled the crash aftermath ineptly, raw emotion should not
be allowed to determine relations between the Chinese and Malaysian
governments. "It is too early to let public opinion lead the way at the
current stage. Whether Beijing-Kuala Lumpur relations will dim depends
to some extent on how the [Chinese] government will act between
diplomatic manoeuvering and public opinion."
The New Zealand
family of Paul Weeks, one of the passengers, added their voice to
criticism of the Malaysian authorities. "The whole situation has been
handled appallingly, incredibly insensitively," Sara Weeks, the missing
man's sister, told Radio Live in New Zealand.
"Everyone is angry
about it. "The Malaysian government, the airline – it's just all been
incredibly poor. Who's to say they couldn't have located the plane the
day that it happened?" - The Guardian
Don't let extreme feelings preempt MH370 findings
A ground crew member directs a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion upon its returns to RAAF base Pearce from searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
Monday was a dramatic day for the Chinese relatives of those aboard the
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared over two weeks ago.
After
the Malaysian side announced that the airliner had "ended in the
southern Indian Ocean" and none of the passengers survived, relatives of
the 154 Chinese citizens on board became furious. They released a
statement accusing the Malaysian government of being "murderers" and
protested outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing the next day.
These
families have the support of the Chinese people, notably with doubts
over the information released by the Malaysian side and criticism
against the Malaysian government on China's social media.
When
Victor Wong, a Chinese-Malaysian singer well known among the Chinese
public, expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims on his
Sina Weibo account, a flurry of comments followed, blaming him for
being hypocritical and calling for a boycott of his performances in
China.
Many also urged the Chinese government to take a tough
stance toward Malaysia, which is thought by many to have mishandled the
search for the missing plane.
This mysterious accident is being
followed by the world, as are China's reactions. In the eyes of some
Western observers, China is "doing its best to foster a sense of
aggrievement" and "exploiting international incidents for domestic
gain."
Indeed, Malaysia should take most of the blame as it
dragged this painful accident on for too long. Its approach in handling
the aftermath of the tragedy raised doubts from international watchers.
The grievances of the Chinese people didn't come from nowhere.
There
have already been analyses in the foreign media speculating on a
strained relationship between China and Malaysia, despite the fact that
Malaysia was the first ASEAN country to establish diplomatic ties with
China in 1974 and that Malaysia is China's largest trading partner among
ASEAN countries.
China's tourist agencies have reported a sharp decline in the number of Chinese travelers choosing to visit Malaysia.
The
past few years have seen the Chinese government facing increasing
pressure from the public in making diplomatic decisions. There is a
worrying sign that the public mood might be fanned by some opinion
leaders at the price of ruining good people-to-people relationship
between the two countries.
It is too early to let public opinion
lead the way at the current stage. Whether Beijing-Kuala Lumpur
relations will dim depends to some extent on how the government will act
between diplomatic maneuvering and public opinion. - Global Times
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