80% of Malaysian Missing Plane Underwater Search Area Completed


(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) rth Australia April 23 - The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has completed 80% of focused underwater search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 until Wednesday. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said Bluefin-21 which was completing its tenth mission has not found any contact of interest. It was first deployed on April 14. However the JACC did not indicate whether the unmanned vehicle would be deployed for its eleventh mission once it resurfaced from its current mission according to (Bernama) news agency. The focused underwater search area was defined as a ten kilometre radius around the second towed pinger locator (TPL) detection it said in a statement on Wednesday. Bluefin-21 was dispatched in the hope of locating any debris of the missing plane underwater since no further confirmed signals were picked up by the TPL since April 8. It uses acoustic sounds to create a three dimensional map of the sea floor and will take a minimum 24 hours to complete each mission which includes four hours to download the data collected. The weather forecast on Wednesday indicated a chance of heavy rain widespread low cloud with south easterly winds while sea could swell up to 2.5 metres. The JACC stressed that the prevailing weather conditions may affect Wednesday's air search. However for the time being the planned visual search continues with up to ten military aircraft and 12 ships within a search area totalling some 37948 square km with its centre located 855 km north west of Perth. Flight MH370 with 239 people aboard left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. A multinational search was mounted for the Boeing 777-200 aircraft first in the South China Sea and then after it was learnt that the plane had veered off course in the southern Indian Ocean. After an analysis of satellite data indicated that the plane's last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth Australia Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak announced on March 24 that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".


Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.