Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday suggested the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might be scaled back, while expressing hope the aircraft would be found a year after it vanished.
The aircraft disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 last year with 239 people on board. No trace has been found, despite a massive surface and underwater hunt.
“I do reassure the families of our hope and expectation that the ongoing search will succeed,” Abbott told parliament in Canberra. “I can’t promise that the search will go on at this intensity forever, but we will continue our very best efforts to resolve this mystery and provide some answers.”
His comments came as a group representing the families of MH370 passengers — the majority of which were Chinese — released a statement insisting that the search “must continue.”
Australia is leading the hunt in the Indian Ocean about 1,000km off its west coast, with four ships using sophisticated sonar systems to scour a huge area.
The vessels are focusing on a 60,000km2 priority zone, with the search scheduled to end in May. More than 40 percent of the ocean floor has been explored to date.
Weather conditions in the remote region are expected to worsen after May.
The agency coordinating the search, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, has previously said a decision on continuing after the current hunt was is completed up to the Australian and Malaysian governments.
The families of some of the Australian victims were in parliament when Abbott made his statement, as was Malaysian High Commissioner Zainal Abidin Ahmad, Chinese Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭) and representatives of other nations that lost citizens.
The MH370 passengers’ families yesterday said in a statement on a Chinese messaging app that “the search must continue and all options explored if nothing is found in the coming weeks.”
“We do not accept [Malaysia’s] proclamation and will not give up hope until we have definitive proof of a crash and a determination of location — even if it is just one piece of the wreckage,” they said.
Abbott said the plane’s disappearance “demonstrated a fundamental gap in tracking long-haul flights, particularly over the oceans.”
Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia plan to trial a “world first” system that increases the tracking of aircraft over remote oceans to a minimum rate of every 15 minutes from current intervals of 30 to 40 minutes.
“While it is not a complete answer, it will deliver immediate improvements in the way we track aircraft while more comprehensive solutions are developed and implemented,” Abbott said of the system, announced on Sunday.
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