Chinese search plane lands at wrong airport
Print Edition
THE first Chinese plane heading to Australia to join the hunt for a missing Malaysia Airlines jet landed at the wrong airport yesterday, underscoring the difficulties facing the increasingly complex multinational search effort.
The Chinese IL-76 military aircraft made an unexpected stop at Perth International Airport before heading to its correct destination at RAAF Base Pearce outside Perth, where search and rescue operations for Flight MH370, which has been missing for two weeks, are now being coordinated.
“They landed at Perth and then they landed here,” RAAF Corporal Janine Fabre said. “We don’t know why.”
RAAF Base Pearce, a dusty collection of runways and low-slung buildings about 35km north of Perth, is taking on the feel of a model United Nations as aircraft and ships — not to mention journalists — from at least six countries descend on the region.
But as the number of search vehicles and nationalities increases, so too do the challenges including security sensibilities, language and operational and command issues.
Six aircraft and two merchant vessels are now scouring an area of the remote southern Indian Ocean where suspected debris was spotted by a satellite.
US, New Zealand and Australian aircraft on site for three days are now being joined by those from China, Japan and India. All are here to search the zone in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000km southwest of Perth, where the debris was sighted by satellites six days ago.
Each of the countries has its own motivations, said Andrew Davies, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “There might be some practical difficulties with interoperability, data-sharing and communication systems and those sorts of things, but there shouldn’t be anything beyond the good of man,” he said.
RAAF Captain Craig Heap and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss praised the Chinese in particular for their assistance and said that they remained confident despite the obvious challenges.
“It’s a very difficult search but at the end of the day if there is something out there and we’re on top of the area often enough, there’s a reasonable chance that we will find something,” he said.
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