Hunt for Missing Plane Resumes as Search Area Narrows
By KIRK SEMPLE
Surveillance planes searching for the Malaysia Airlines flight found
debris floating in the water and images of those objects will be
analyzed to see if they are connected to the missing jet.
By KIRK SEMPLE
KUALA
LUMPUR, Malaysia — The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumed in
earnest on Saturday as surveillance planes returned to the skies above a
newly defined search area and a Chinese patrol ship already in the zone
tried to locate unidentified floating objects that were spotted by
aircraft on Friday, the Australian authorities said.
Surveillance planes searching for the Malaysia Airlines flight found
debris floating in the water and images of those objects will be
analyzed to see if they are connected to the missing jet.
locate unidentified floating objects that were spotted by aircraft on Friday, the Australian authorities said.
Several
other ships that make up part of the multinational force trying to
locate the Boeing 777-200 were expected to reach the zone sometime late
Saturday, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which
is overseeing the search.
Five
aircraft flying over the new search area on Friday “spotted multiple
objects of various colors” floating in the water, the authority said.
Officials planned to analyze images of the objects overnight and hoped
the Chinese patrol ship, which arrived in the area before dawn on
Saturday, would be able to find the objects and inspect them, if not
recover them for evaluation.
A
fresh sighting of floating objects was also reported Saturday afternoon
by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, which said a Chinese
aircraft spotted three colorful, unidentified objects floating in the
new search zone.
The Search Moves North
Friday’s search area is about 700 miles to the northeast of
the areas previously searched, where objects have been spotted in aerial
and satellite imagery. Full Graphic »
Possible
flight paths
(based on different
speeds the plane may
have been traveling)
547
m.p.h.
540
m.p.h.
460
m.p.h.
AUSTRALIA
Perth
About 1,040 miles
New search area
March 28
Albany
Previous
search areas
INDIAN OCEAN
Locations of objects spotted in aerial and
satellite images over the last two weeks
The
officials involved in the search, mindful of the amount of detritus
adrift in the world’s oceans, cautioned that the sightings were
inconclusive so far.
“It
is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is
ordinarily there,” the Maritime Safety Authority said in its statement.
At
a news conference in Sydney, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia
said weather conditions on Saturday were “benign for that rather
inhospitable part of the world.”
But
he underscored the difficulty of the search, saying: “It is an
extraordinarily remote location. These are inhospitable seas. It’s an
inaccessible place. We are trying to find small bits of wreckage in a
vast ocean, and while we are throwing everything we have at it, the task
goes on.”
A
new analysis of radar data from the morning of March 8, as Flight 370
veered off its intended route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and instead
flew west over Peninsular Malaysia and then south over the Indian Ocean,
compelled officials to shift the search area on Friday to a zone about
1,100 miles west of Perth, Australia.
The
analysis showed that the Malaysia Airlines plane was moving faster than
investigators had previously estimated and therefore it would have
burned fuel at a faster rate and possibly fallen into the Indian Ocean
farther north than previously believed, officials said.
The
new search area is about 700 miles northeast of a zone that had been
the focus of search efforts for most of the week. Satellite images
released in recent days by Australia, China, Thailand, Japan and Airbus
Defense and Space, the European satellite launch company, has shown
hundreds of floating objects in or very near the previous search area,
giving hope that investigators were getting close to finding the crash
site.
But
at a news briefing in Kuala Lumpur on Friday evening, Hishammuddin
Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister, said that considering the currents
in that part of the Indian Ocean, the objects seen in the satellite
images could have drifted from the new search area to the locations
where they were spotted.
The
revision of the search area was based largely on work done by analysts
from Boeing in Seattle, part of a multinational team of experts
collaborating with Malaysian investigators, officials here said.
Analysts
arrived at their conclusions after re-evaluating the radar data and
weighing other factors such as the amount of fuel on the plane when it
departed and the altitude it was flying as it headed over the south
Indian Ocean, Malaysian officials added, offering no further
elaboration.
Some 10 aircraft flew over the new search area on Friday, and 8 aircraft returned on Saturday.
The
Chinese Maritime Safety Administration ship Haixun 01 was in the area
at daybreak on Saturday, Australian officials said, and at least five
other ships were expected to arrive in the zone by the end of the day.
The new search area offers more favorable conditions for the search than the previous areas, officials said.
It
is only a fifth of the size of the previous search area, though still
large: At 123,000 square miles, or 319,000 square kilometers, it is
roughly the size of New Mexico or Poland.
It
is also closer to Perth, the departure point for the search planes,
which will now be able to cut their flight time by as much as an hour
each way, allowing aircrews to spend more time combing the sea looking
for debris from Flight 370.
In
addition, the ocean in the new search area is shallower in some places
than in the previous search area, and the weather is less inclement,
officials said.
But
Australian and Malaysian officials cautioned that the new search zone
also posed considerable difficulties and that further analyses of data
could result in still another change in the search area.
On
Saturday, Mr. Hishamuddin stopped by a hotel near Kuala Lumpur to meet
with the relatives of Chinese citizens who were aboard Flight 370. The
Malaysian government has been subjected to withering criticism by the
relatives and friends of Chinese passengers, who have accused Malaysian
officials of withholding information about the disappearance of the
plane and not doing enough to find it.
Speaking
to reporters after the closed-door meeting, he said the families wanted
assurances that the search-and-rescue operation would continue.
“As
long as there is even a remote chance of a survivor, we will pray and
do whatever it takes,” he said, adding: “This is the hardest part of my
life at the moment, meeting up with the families.”
The
recovery of debris from Flight 370 would provide final confirmation
that the plane had crashed into the ocean and offer at least partial
resolution to the families and friends of the passengers and crew.
It
might also go some way toward helping solve perhaps the most enduring
mystery of the plane’s disappearance: What caused it to veer so sharply
off course?
The
debris might be of limited use in trying to locate the plane’s data
recorders, or black boxes, because it could have drifted hundreds of
miles from the point of impact.
“The
more time that passes, the more difficult it is to connect the debris
that is found with the location of the crash,” Rémy Jouty, the director
of the French Bureau of Investigation and Analyses, said in a recent
interview. “We are already at a point where even if we find debris
tomorrow that it is very difficult to make those kinds of calculations.”
Still,
recovered parts from the plane might allow investigators to rule in or
out certain events that could have precipitated a crash. Scorch marks on
the pieces, for example, might indicate that there was a fire, and the
nature of any fire damage could offer clues about its source.
In
the case of the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, investigators
were able to draw numerous conclusions from the state of the recovered
debris. The fact that the oxygen masks had not deployed and that life
vests remained in their pouches indicated that those on board had not
had time to prepare for an impact. They deduced from the damage that the
plane hit the water at high speed and were able to tell which part of
the plane hit the water first. In addition, 50 bodies were recovered,
and the autopsies revealed that the impact was extremely violent.
In
the search for Flight 370, the approaching winter in the southern
hemisphere could present serious obstacles, and some experts said that
an underwater search-and-recovery mission would not be possible in the
short term as weather conditions deteriorate. The relatively calmer
waters optimal for an underwater search in the area would not return for
about six months, they said.
But
while the wreckage of the plane is probably in deep, cold waters and
unlikely to degrade significantly in that time, the prospect of such a
delay would be hard for search experts to explain to the family members
and to politicians who want to demonstrate they are doing everything
possible to find out what happened.
Copy http://international.nytimes.com/
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário