Mini-sub goes deep, but yet to find plane
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THE mini-sub searching for missing flight MH370 has reached record depths well beyond its normal operating limits, officials said yesterday as it dived on its fifth seabed mission.
With no results to show since the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared on March 8, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott has set a one-week deadline to locate the plane, which is believed to have crashed in a remote area of the Indian Ocean west of Perth.
Searchers have extended the hunt beyond the normal 4,500-meter depth range of the US Navy’s autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called Bluefin-21.
“The AUV reached a record depth of 4,695m during mission four,” the navy said.
Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center said the sub had been deployed on a new mission as data from the fourth mission “did not provide any contacts of interest.”
The Malaysia Airlines jet is believed to have crashed in the ocean after vanishing while en route between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.
Hopes for finding the plane have focused on the Bluefin-21 after signals believed to be from the plane’s flight data recorders on the seabed fell silent in recent days.
Abbott said the Bluefin-21 would be given about a week as questions are asked about the massive costs.
Analyst Ravikumar Madavaram, an aviation expert at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, estimated the bill at US$100 million so far.
“If we don’t find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider,” Abbott said.
Both Abbott and Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein vowed not to give up looking for the plane.
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