Yahoo!7 and agencies
March 21, 2014, 5:25 pm
If the debris spotted in the Indian Ocean is found to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, it could have drifted more than 500 kilometres from the crash site, a Perth oceanographer says.
Australia resumed the search Friday for possible wreckage from a missing Malaysian jetliner in a remote, storm-swept stretch of the Indian Ocean, hoping for better weather as spotters seek to identify the objects shown on grainy satellite images.
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The University of Western Australia's Chari Pattiaratchi says the searchers face the world's most treacherous seas, and a wreckage recovery operation would be extremely challenging.
The 23,000 square kilometre search area, about 2500km southwest of Perth, is in the body of water known as the Roaring Forties, where strong circumpolar westerly winds blow.
Waves of four metres to five metres are constant, but can swell to more than 10 metres during a storm.
"It is as hostile as it can get," Prof Pattiaratchi told ABC radio.
"Because of the strong winds, the waves are always breaking, so it's white-capping all the time, so to distinguish between whether it's part of the debris or a wave breaking ... it is quite a challenging system.
"Water depths are up to five kilometres deep, so even if you find something, it's a big challenge to recover it."
If the objects spotted in the southern Indian Ocean prove to be part of the MH370 debris, several aviation experts claims it would almost certainly point to deliberate cockpit intervention - by either crew, pilots of passengers.
Earlier on Friday, Neil Hansford, chairman of Strategic Aviation Solutions, said he was convinced that the disappearance of flight MH370 wasn't an accident.
He says the evidence indicates the plane's crew was involved.
"I think it's been put there either by one of the crew or both, and they've picked an area where the aircraft won't be found," Hansford told morning television on Friday.
"This was a crew-related incident. It wasn't a catastrophic explosion. It wasn't hit by military ordnance."
"[The debris is] in about 10,000ft of water. In that part of the world there's currents."
"Whether it's terrorism or activism, it's certainly something that has been well structured and well planned."
Hansford also said that the level of fuel on the flight was a strong indication that it was not accidental.
"This aircraft has been positioned to where it is; it could as easily, more frighteningly, have been positioned to the centre of Australia," Hansford said.
"[Malaysian investigators] have never had control of this incident from the time the passenger manifest was never checked against the stolen passport."
"We've only seriously been involved for really five for six days. We were all out looking in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand until they realised they didn't have a clue."
Australian Maritime Safety Authority Search and Rescue Officers coordinate the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from the Rescue Coordination Centre in Canberra. Photo: Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
Tony Abbott defends decision to go public with MH370 satellite news
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been forced to strongly defend his decision to announce the discovery of satellite images that could potentially unlock the mystery of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Abbott was asked at a press conference in Papua New Guinea on Friday afternoon whether he had "jumped the gun" by announcing to Parliament that Australian authorities had identified two objects on satellite imagery that could be linked to the missing Boeing 777.
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"Now, it could just be a container that has fallen off a ship," Abbott told reporters in Port Moresby.
"We just don't know, but we owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle.
"Because of the understandable state of anxiety and apprehension that they're in we also owe it to them to give them information as soon as it's to hand.
"I think I was doing that yesterday in the Parliament."
He added that Australia is throwing "everything we've got" to get to the site of the potential MH370 debris, confirming that five aircraft and an Austalian naval ship were heading to the southern Indian Ocean.
"It is an extremely remote part of the southern Indian ocean," he said.
"It's about the most inaccessible spot that you would imagine on the face of the earth."
"But if there is anything down there we will find it."
"We owe it to the families of those people to do no less."
Australia resumes remote ocean search for plane debris
Nearly two weeks after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar over the South China Sea, the search focus has switched to an isolated section of ocean 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth.
Satellite images have emerged showing two indistinct floating objects in the area -- the largest estimated at 24 metres (79 feet) across -- which Australia and Malaysia have described as "credible" leads.
Five aircraft were taking part in Friday's operations -- three Australian air force P-3 Orions, a US Navy P-8 Poseidon and a civil Bombardier Global Express jet.
Hampering the effort is the distance from the west coast of Australia, which allows the planes only about two hours of actual search time before they must return to Perth.
A Norwegian merchant ship is already helping scour the search area, but Australia's HMAS Success, which is capable of retrieving any wreckage, was still days away.
- Break in the weather -
Poor weather has compounded the difficulty in finding the objects. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said rain showers eased Friday but that drizzle, low cloud cover and reduced visibility would continue.
Although Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott cautioned that the objects may yet prove to be the latest in a number of false leads, his announcement of the satellite image analysis galvanised a search that had seemed stuck in a downward spiral of frustration and recrimination.
The nature of the events that diverted MH370 from its intended flight path on March 8 remain shrouded in mystery, although Malaysian investigators have stuck to their assumption that it was the result of a "deliberate action" by someone on board.
Three scenarios have gained particular attention: hijacking, pilot sabotage, and a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated the flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
If the objects in the remote southern Indian Ocean are shown to have come from MH370, some analysts believe the hijacking theory will lose ground.
"The reasonable motives for forcing the plane to fly there are very, very few," Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst, told AFP.
- 'A lonely, lonely place' -
The area is well off recognised shipping lanes, and the Norwegian car transporter was understood to have taken two days to reach it.
"It's really off the beaten track," said Tim Huxley, chief executive of Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings in Hong Kong. "It's a lonely, lonely place."
For the anguished relatives of the 227 passengers on board, who have already endured an agonising nearly two-week wait, the Australian "find" is a sombre development.
Sarah Bajc, the partner of American passenger Philip Wood, said she had clung to the notion of a hijacking plot that might result in the passengers' eventual safe return.
"So if this debris is indeed part of that plane, then it kind of dashes that wishful thinking to pieces," Bajc told CNN.
"So I really hope it's not a part of the plane, but, you know, if it is, then at least we can go down another path of deciding that maybe we need to start preparing for another scenario instead."
The satellite images were taken on March 16, meaning the satellite-tagged objects would have been drifting for days in a volatile maritime region.
"The current there is one of the strongest in the world, moving at as fast as one metre per second," said Gan Jianping, an oceanographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
- Seeking the black box -
If debris is found, the mammoth task remains of locating the "black box" flight data recorder, which offers the best chance of peeling back the layers of confusion and mystery surrounding MH370's disappearance.
Malaysia has been criticised for its handling of the crisis, especially by relatives who have accused authorities and the flag-carrier airline of providing insufficient or misleading information.
Nearly two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese nationals. Some of their family members refused to accept the ocean objects indicated a possible crash.
"My son is still alive. My son is still alive. I don't believe the news," cried Wen Wancheng, 63, one of a group of relatives who have spent the last two weeks holed up in a Beijing hotel.
There has been little progress in what essentially became a criminal investigation after it was determined that the disappearance of MH370 was probably deliberate.
Malaysia has asked the FBI to help recover data it said was deleted from a home flight simulator belonging to the plane's chief pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, but otherwise no evidence has emerged to implicate him.
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