Investigators searching for a missing Malaysian jet have concluded an area where acoustic signals were detected is not the final resting place of the plane after an unmanned submersible found no trace of it, the search coordinator said yesterday.
The US Navy’s Bluefin 21 finished its final underwater mission in the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday after scouring 850km2, the Joint Agency Coordination Center said.
“The area can now be discounted as the final resting place” of the missing plane, the Australia-based center said in a statement.
The underwater search for the plane, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, will be suspended for a couple months while more powerful sonar equipment is brought in to search a much wider area of 56,000km2, based on analysis of satellite data of the plane’s most likely course, the center said.
That analysis has led authorities to believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 diverted sharply from its flight path and flew south to the Indian Ocean.
However, not a single piece of the missing Boeing 777 has been found in one of aviation’s most baffling mysteries.
The news comes after the US Navy dismissed a US expert’s reported comments that acoustic “pings” heard last month did not come from the airplane’s black boxes.
CNN reported that the US Navy’s civilian deputy director of ocean engineering, Michael Dean, said most countries now agreed that the sounds detected by the navy’s Towed Pinger Locator came from a manmade source unrelated to the jet.
“Mike Dean’s comments today were speculative and premature, as we continue to work with our partners to more thoroughly understand the data acquired by the Towed Pinger Locator,” US Navy spokesman Chris Johnson said in a statement, referring to Australia and Malaysia.
Dean, who is based in Washington, could not be immediately reached for comment.
In an e-mailed response to questions, the joint coordination agency said it was still examining the signals, but acknowledged: “We may never know the origin of the acoustic detections.”
The agency would not yet reveal the next most likely crash site, saying that “will be made public in due course.”
Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said authorities would continue to analyze the sounds that led to the initial search area.
“We concentrated the search in that area because the pings, the information we received, was the best information available at the time and that’s all you can do in circumstances like this, to follow the very best leads,” Truss told the Australian parliament in announcing the search’s failure.
“We’re still very confident that the resting place of the aircraft is in the southern ocean and along” the course indicated by satellite analysis, he added.
Australian opposition MP Tony Burke offered his party’s condolences to the victims’ families.
“The hopes of many have been dashed,” Burke told parliament.
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