Material found on Australia shore unlikely from jet
Print Edition
UNIDENTIFIED material that washed ashore in southwestern Australia and is being examined for any link to the lost Malaysian plane is unlikely to have come from the jet, an official said yesterday.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was scrutinizing photos of the object, which washed ashore 10 kilometers east of Augusta in Western Australia state. But Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the safety bureau, said an initial analysis of the material — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — suggested it was not from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
“We do not consider this likely to be of use to our search for MH370,” Dolan said.
“At this stage, we are not getting excited.”
Dolan said the analysis of the material would likely be completed overnight and a formal statement issued today. Augusta is near Australia’s southwestern tip, about 310 kilometers from Perth, where the search has been headquartered.
Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister said that failure to find any clue in the most likely crash site of the lost jet would not spell the end of the search, as officials plan soon to bring in more powerful sonar equipment that can delve deeper beneath the Indian Ocean.
The search coordination center said a robotic submarine, the US Navy’s Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 80 percent of the 310-square kilometer seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor. Nothing of interest had been found.
The 4.5-kilometer deep search area is a circle 20 kilometers wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane’s black boxes. But the batteries powering those signals are now believed dead.
Defense Minister David Johnston said Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the United States on the next phase of the search for the plane, which disappeared March 8. Details on the next phase will be announced next week.
Johnston said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the remote-controlled subs that found RMS Titanic 3,800 meters under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the Australian WWII wreck HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean off the Australian coast, north of the current search area, in 2008.
“The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water,” Johnston said. While the Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the seabed search area to complete, Johnston said that task would take another two weeks.
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