Sub to search for missing plane wreck
Search crews will, for the first time, send a sub deep into the Indian Ocean to try and determine whether signals detected by sound-locating equipment are from the missing Malaysian plane’s black boxes, it was announced today.
Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency co-ordinating the search off Australia’s west coast, said the crew on board the Ocean Shield would launch the underwater vehicle as soon as possible.
The Bluefin 21 autonomous sub can create a sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the sea bed.
The move comes after crews picked up a series of underwater sounds over the past two weeks that were consistent with an aircraft’s black boxes.
"We haven't had a single detection in six days, and I guess it's time to go under water,'' said retired air chief marshal Mr Houston, the head of a joint agency co-ordinating the search off Australia's west coast.
“Analysis of the four signals has allowed the provisional definition of a reduced and manageable search area on the ocean floor. The experts have therefore determined that the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin 21 as soon as possible,” he told a news conference in Perth.
But Mr Houston warned the switch to the submarine will not automatically “result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not”.
Recovering the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders is essential for investigators to try to figure out what happened to Flight 370, which vanished on March 8. It was carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese, while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.
After analysing satellite data, officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Investigators trying to determine what happened to the plane are focusing on four areas - hijacking, sabotage and personal or psychological problems of those on board.
Two sounds heard on April 5 by the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which was towing the ping locator, were determined to be consistent with the signals emitted from the black boxes. Two more pings were detected in the same general area last Tuesday, but no new ones have been picked up since then.
Mr Houston said the search using the submarine would be “a slow and painstaking process”.
The sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator and will need about six weeks to two months to canvass the current underwater zone. The signals are also coming from 15,000 feet below the surface, which is the deepest the sub can dive.
A visual search for debris is also planned over 18,400 square miles of ocean centred 1,400 miles north west of Perth. A total of 12 planes and 15 ships will join the two searches.
Meanwhile officials are investigating an oil slick not far from the area where the underwater sounds were detected. Crews have collected a sample of the oil and are sending it back to Australia for analysis, a process that will take several days.
The oil does not appear to be from any of the ships in the area, but Mr Houston warned against jumping to any conclusions about its source.
