A Bernama report yesterday quoted Defence Minister Hishamuddin Hussein as 99.9% sure MH370 would be located soon based on the latest cutting-edge equipment now being used in the search effort.
Today, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Indonesia has been put on the alert by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to expect possible debris of the missing aircraft to sweep onto their shores.
The latest update from the bureau which has been leading the search of the missing aircraft read: “Drift modelling undertaken by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has suggested that if there were any floating debris, it is far more likely to have travelled west, away from the coastline of Australia.”
On March 8, flight MH370 carrying 239 passengers lost contact with Air Traffic Control while travelling through airspace between Malaysia and Vietnam. Subsequent radar and satellite data placed the aircraft’s location within the southern part of the Indian Ocean.
Last month, new information gained from ATSB’s “developed and refined” technical analysis managed to determine the point of the seventh arc of the southern Indian Ocean where the airplane was most likely to have disappeared.
The narrowed search scope allowed a prioritised search effort to be carried out using underwater vehicles, GO Phoenix on October 6 and Fugro Discovery which arrived at the search zone yesterday.
To date, underwater search operations have covered more than 1,200 square kilometres out of the 60,000 square kilometres of a high priority search area expected to take one year to cover.
Meanwhile, ATSB Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan said that while there was no certainty, there was a “high probability that the aircraft will be found close to the arc” but warned that the search zone could still change.
-fmt
No comments:
Write commentsNote: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.