MH370 search: investigators examine Australia debris

The daily search operation 

Authorities in Australia are examining material washed ashore to determine if it is related to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The debris was found by a member of the public near the town of Augusta, some 300km (190 miles) south of Perth.

Images of the debris have been sent to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), who are now investigating.

“It’s sufficiently interesting for us to take a look,” an ATSB chief Martin Dolan told CNN.

Mr Dolan said the debris looked like sheet metal with rivets in it, but added: “The more we look at it, the less excited we get.”

This news needs to be treated with caution. There have been many false leads over the past seven weeks that have come to nothing.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is examining photos of the possible debris, says it takes all leads seriously but that the more it looks at the images the less excited it is.

The shoreline where the material was washed up is around 2,000km (1,250 miles) from the area in the southern Indian Ocean where search teams are now focusing their operation.

There, an automated submarine is continuing to scan the sea bed where possible signals from the plane’s black box were detected two weeks ago. But, with 80% of the search zone covered, nothing has been found.

Without a breakthrough soon questions will be asked about how long the hunt can go on.

The ATSB confirmed it was examining the photographs “to determine whether further physical analysis is required and if there is any relevance to the search of missing flight MH370”.

The images have also been sent to authorities in Malaysia and the ATSB is expected to collect the material later on Wednesday.

The material was metallic and about 2.5m (8ft) long, ABC News in Australia reported.

The Malaysia Airlines aircraft was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared in March.

Malaysia is running the investigation into the plane’s disappearance, but search efforts are being led by Australia’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC).

For the past two days, bad weather has prevented planes from taking part in the search about 1,600km (990 miles) north-west of Perth.

A US Navy Bluefin-21 mini-submarine scanning the ocean bed has covered more than 80% of a 310 sq km (120 sq mile) search area in the southern Indian Ocean, without finding any sign of debris in water that is up to 4.5km deep.

PM Tony Abbott says Australia “will not rest” until the search is completed

Up to 10 military aircraft and 12 ships are currently taking part in the hunt. The daily operation, involving some two dozen nations, is already shaping up to be the most expensive in aviation history.

Australia said on Wednesday that it would not abandon the hunt, insisting that the cost of the operation was not a concern.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said if the current underwater search was unsuccessful, a new strategy would begin.

Defence Minister David Johnston has said that sophisticated sonar equipment will probably be used in the next stage.

“The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water,” Mr Johnston said.

Mr Abbott said the probable impact zone of the airliner was in an area of the sea floor 700km (430 miles) long and 80km (50 miles) wide.

The torpedo-shaped underwater vehicle – called a Bluefin-21 – has so far covered 80% of the target area

Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein announced a new panel to investigate flight MH370

In a separate development, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that his country’s cabinet had approved the formation of an international investigation team to find out what happened to the missing plane.

“The main purpose of the team is to evaluate, investigate and determine the actual cause of the accident so similar accidents could be avoided in the future,” he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Australia says that it is now consulting with Malaysia, China and the United States on the next phase of the search, which is likely to be announced next week.

Mr Abbott said a new search strategy would be put into action if nothing was found in the current seabed search.

“If at the end of that period we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search, we may well rethink the search, but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery,” he said.

“We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board, we owe it to the hundreds of millions – indeed billions – of people who travel by air to try to get to the bottom of this.”

“The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time,” the Australian prime minister said.