Malaysia Says It 'Will Not Stop Looking' for Jet
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Malaysia vowed Saturday that it would not give up trying to find the
missing jetliner and said a multinational investigation team would to
try to solve the aviation mystery, as a Chinese ship involved in the
search reported hearing a "pulse signal" in Indian Ocean waters.
Military and civilian planes, ships with deep-sea searching equipment
and a British nuclear submarine scoured a remote patch of the southern
Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast, in an increasingly urgent hunt
for debris and the "black box" recorders that hold vital information
about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's last hours.
After weeks of fruitless looking, officials face the daunting prospect
that sound-emitting beacons in the flight and voice recorders will soon
fall silent as their batteries die after sounding electronic "pings" for
a month.
China's official Xinhua News Agency reported that a Chinese ship that is
part of the search effort detected a "pulse signal" Saturday in
southern Indian Ocean waters. The report said it was not yet determined
whether the signal was related to the missing jet.
Xinhua said a black box detector deployed by the ship, Haixun 01, picked
up a signal at 37.5 kilohertz (cycles per second), the same frequency
emitted by flight data recorders.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said in a text
message that authorities were "verifying the report." The Australian
government agency coordinating the search would not immediately comment
on it.
John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member,
called the report "exciting," but cautioned that "there is an awful lot
of noise in the ocean."
"One ship, one ping doesn't make a success story," he said. "It will
have to be explored. I guarantee you there are other resources being
moved into the area to see if it can be verified."
The Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard. So far, no trace of the jet
has been found.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister and acting transport
minister, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the cost of mounting the
search was immaterial compared to providing solace for the families of
those on board by establishing what happened.
"I can only speak for Malaysia, and Malaysia will not stop looking for MH370," Hishammuddin said.
He said an independent investigator would be appointed to lead a team
that will try to determine what happened to Flight 370. The team will
include three groups: One will look at airworthiness, including
maintenance, structures and systems; another will examine operations,
such as flight recorders and meteorology; and a third will consider
medical and human factors.
The investigation team will include officials and experts from several
nations, including Australia — which as the nearest country to the
search zone is currently heading the hunt — China, the United States,
Britain and France, Hishammuddin said.
A multinational search team is desperately trying to find debris
floating in the water or faint sound signals from the data recorders
that could lead them to the missing plane and unravel the mystery of its
fate.
Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as
officials can then use data on currents to backtrack to where the plane
hit the water, and where the flight recorders may be.
Beacons in the black boxes emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, but the batteries last for only about a month.
Officials have said the hunt for the wreckage is among the hardest ever
undertaken, and will get much harder still if the beacons fall silent
before they are found.
"Where we're at right now, four weeks since this plane disappeared,
we're much, much closer," said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas,
editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com. "But frustratingly, we're still
miles away from finding it. We need to find some piece of debris on the
water; we need to pick up the ping."
If it doesn't happen, the only hope for finding the plane may be a full
survey of the Indian Ocean floor, an operation that would take years and
an enormous international operation.
Hishammuddin said there were no new satellite images or data that can
provide new leads for searchers. The focus now is fully on the ocean
search, he said.
Two ships — the Australian navy's Ocean Shield and the British HMS Echo —
carrying sophisticated equipment that can hear the recorders' pings
returned Saturday to an area investigators hope is close to where the
plane went down. They concede the area they have identified is a best
guess.
Up to 13 military and civilian planes and nine other ships took part in
the search Saturday, the Australian agency coordinating the search said.
Because the U.S. Navy's pinger locator can pick up signals to a depth of
6,100 meters (20,000 feet), it should be able to hear the plane's data
recorders even if they are in the deepest part of the search zone —
about 5,800 meters (19,000 feet). But that's only if the locator gets
within range of the black boxes — a tough task, given the size of the
search area and the fact that the pinger locator must be dragged slowly
through the water at just 1 to 5 knots (1 to 6 mph).
Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the joint agency
coordinating the operation, acknowledged the search area was essentially
a best guess, and noted the time when the plane's locator beacons would
shut down was "getting pretty close."
The overall search area is a 217,000-square-kilometer
(84,000-square-mile) zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,700
kilometers (1,100 miles) northwest of the western Australian city of
Perth.
———
Ng reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Associated Press writers
Gillian Wong in Kuala Lumpur, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia,
Kristen Gelineau and Rohan Sullivan in Sydney, and Joan Lowy in
Washington contributed to this report.
COPY http://abcnews.go.com/
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