Australian officials: Nothing spotted in search for Malaysia Airlines jet
The Associated Press
PERTH, Australia — Search planes scoured a remote patch of the Indian Ocean but came back empty-handed Friday after a 10-hour mission looking for any sign of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, another disappointing day in one of the world's biggest aviation mysteries.
Australian officials pledged to continue the search for two large objects spotted by a satellite earlier this week, which had raised hopes that the two-week hunt for the Boeing 777 that disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board was nearing a breakthrough.
But Australia's acting prime minister, Warren Truss, tamped down expectations.
"Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating — it may have slipped to the bottom," he said. "It's also certain that any debris or other material would have moved a significant distance over that time, potentially hundreds of kilometers."
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In Kuala Lumpur, where the plane took off for Beijing, Malaysia's defense minister thanked the more than two dozen countries involved in the search that stretches from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean, and said the focus remains on finding the airplane.
"This going to be a long haul," Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference.
The search area indicated by the satellite images — some 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth — is a four-hour round-trip flight, leaving planes with only enough fuel to search for about two hours.
On Friday, five planes, including three P-3 Orions, made the trip. While search conditions had improved from Thursday, with much better visibility, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said there were no sightings of plane debris.
Searchers relied mostly on trained spotters aboard the planes rather than radar because radar found nothing in the first day of the search Thursday, Australian officials said.
The search will focus more on visual sightings because civilian aircraft are being brought in. The military planes will continue to use both radar and spotters.
"Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday, we have replanned the search to be visual. So aircraft flying relatively low, very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows and looking to see objects," said John Young, manager of the maritime safety authority's emergency response division.
Two Chinese aircraft are expected to arrive in Perth on Saturday to join the search, and two Japanese aircraft will arrive Sunday, Truss said. A small flotilla of ships coming to Australia from China was still several days away.
"We are doing all that we can, devoting all the resources we can and we will not give up until all of the options have been exhausted," said Truss, who is acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is in Papua New Guinea.
There is a limited battery life for the beacons in the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders — about 30 days, said Chuck Schofield, vice president of business development for Radiant Power Corp. He said it's "very likely" that his company made the beacons on the missing jet.
The devices work to a depth of 20,000 feet, with a signal range of about two nautical miles, depending on variables like sea conditions. The signals are located using a device operated on the surface of the water or towed to a depth.
Experts say it is impossible to tell if the grainy satellite images of the two objects — one 24 meters (almost 80 feet) long and the other measuring 5 meters (15 feet) — were debris from the plane. But officials have called this the best lead so far in the search that began March 8 after the plane vanished over the Gulf of Thailand on an overnight flight to Beijing.