Hunt for missing flight set to intensify
Print Edition
THE hunt for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner will likely include cutting-edge sonar equipment when it ramps up again in October after the stormy southern hemisphere winter has passed, the Australian search leader said yesterday.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is overseeing the recovery operation on Malaysia’s behalf, has been criticized by some deep-sea salvage experts for not choosing synthetic aperture sonar, or SAS, from the outset of the search for flight MH370 that began far off the west Australian coast in October last year.
With the standard side-scan sonar that has been used to scour half the search area so far, the image of a seabed feature becomes less clear the farther it is away. With SAS, the image remains sharp.
Martin Dolan, the bureau’s chief commissioner, said negotiations are underway to hire SAS equipment to add to a fourth ship that will join the search, with the aim of combing the entire 120,000 square kilometer search area in the Indian Ocean by the middle of next year.
Fugro Survey, the Dutch underwater survey company hired to search for the plane that vanished on March 8 last year with 239 people aboard, has defended its use of traditional side-scan sonar. Fugro search director Paul Kennedy has described SAS as developing technology with some questions about its reliability.
Senior government officials from Australia, Malaysia and China — which lost 153 citizens in the disaster — are to meet in Australia next month to discuss future funding of the search.
So far, the underwater search has cost 80 million Australian dollars (US$57 million), with Australia and Malaysia splitting the cost.
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