The area searched by the Australian Government for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Credit: AMSA
20 March 2014 – Bad weather hampers Australia plane ‘debris’ search, Zoe Reynolds from IHS writes:
Australian search and rescue teams have so far been unable to find debris that could be from missing Malaysian flight MH370 due to rain and poor visibility. “The RAAF P3 crew unable to locate debris. Cloud & rain limited visibility. Further aircraft to continue search, ” the Australian Maritime Safety authority tweeted today.
Earlier today, AMSA was provided with satellite images that detected debris in the southern Indian Ocean, around 2, 000nm from Perth, which could have come from the missing plane. In a media conference, John Young, AMSA Emergency Response Division general manager, said it was not definite that the debris was from the missing aircraft, but the size of it made it credible evidence. “The objects were reasonable size, awash with water bobbing up and down on the surface, ” he commented, adding one piece was 24m long. “The focus for AMSA is to continue the search operation with all available ships and aircraft. Poor visibility has been reported and this will hamper both air and satellite efforts.” Young stressed the objects may be very difficult to locate. “The most likely scenario is that an aircraft will find an object and report back an accurate GPS and AMSA would task a ship to proceed to the area. That would be our first chance to get a close up look at whatever the objects might be, ” he said. “We have been in this business of doing search and rescue and using satellite imagery before and they don’t always turn out to be related to the search. The weather is not playing the game with us but we will continue until we locate those objects or we are convinced we cannot find them.”
