Malaysia Sending More Ships to Search for Plane
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Malaysian government said Sunday that it would step up efforts to search the southern Indian Ocean for Malaysia Airlines’ missing Flight 370, in the latest indication that a broad international effort to find the plane will continue for many months.
The Malaysian defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, announced at the opening here of a photo exhibition dedicated to the missing plane that Malaysia would send one of its navy vessels with deep-sea survey equipment as well as two commercial vessels with towed, sonar-equipped submersibles.
Malaysia will also keep another naval vessel in the southern Indian Ocean, the Bunga Mas 6, which has been providing logistical support to other ships involved in the search. “The search will not stop until we find it,” Mr. Hishammuddin said.
The missing aircraft, a Boeing 777-200, disappeared on March 8 with 239 people aboard during what was supposed to be a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Six groups separately analyzing satellite signals from the aircraft all concluded that it had mysteriously turned south after passing the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and then had run out of fuel over the southern Indian Ocean and crashed.
Tracking Flight 370
The sequence of events known by the authorities, in local times.
Australia already has a deep-sea survey ship there that it chartered to map the ocean floor in the area, the Fugro Equator, which is designed to withstand the towering waves and powerful storms that sometimes move through the area, 1,000 miles west of Perth. China has also sent a deep-sea survey vessel, the Zhu Kezhen, although Angus Houston, the Australian official overseeing the search, said in a telephone interview last month that the Chinese vessel was less specialized for working in heavy seas.
Australia stopped accepting tenders last week for a 60 million Australian dollar, or $56 million, contract for up to three towed submersibles to spend as long as a year scanning the ocean floor with sonar for debris from the plane. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has not yet chosen a winner for the contract.
Deep-sea submersibles are more reliable if they are towed fairly close to the ocean floor – sometimes as little as 100 feet from the bottom. But the submersibles can be wrecked if towed into a cliff or other seafloor feature. So the first step has been to map the seafloor in considerable detail for possible obstructions in the planned paths of the submersibles.
Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the bureau, said in an email reply to questions that Malaysia’s announcement on Sunday was in addition to Australia’s previously disclosed plans.
“This is a Malaysian contribution to the Australian-led search effort and will be integrated with the capability we are acquiring through our tender process,” he said.
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