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THE HUNT FOR Flight MH370 has failed to turn up any debris, but its unprecedented scale in one of the world’s remotest locations has provided valuable lessons for future search and rescue missions.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on this day last year, with mourning families and friends of the 239 people on board still waiting to hear what happened 12 months later.
There has been no trace of the Boeing airliner despite an extensive air and sea search.
Four ships, coordinated by Australia, continue to scour a huge underwater area at least 1,600 kilometres from the nearest piece of land in a stretch of the Indian Ocean previously only mapped by satellite.
“The size of the area we’re covering is unprecedented,” search chief Martin Dolan, head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told AFP.
At most, when the French were looking for Air France 447, it covered a quarter of the sort of area we have in mind.
Flight AF447 was hauled from the Atlantic nearly two years after it crashed in 2009 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The MH370 search — jointly funded by Australia and Malaysia with a budget of €85 million — is focused on a 60,000 square kilometre priority area and is scheduled to end in May.
The thin, long stretch of water is within the so-called seventh arc, where the plane was calculated to have emitted a final satellite “handshake”.
After months of painstaking efforts, which have seen the ocean floor in the area mapped for the first time, all authorities have found is a handful of shipping containers.
The search area is so remote that the four vessels involved — Fugro Supporter, Fugro Equator, Fugro Discovery and GO Phoenix — need up to six days to reach it from the Australian port of Fremantle, where they routinely refuel and restock.
While at sea, they frequently encounter conditions similar to the “Roaring Forties” north of Antarctica, winds that whip up mountainous seas.
The turbulence penetrates below the ocean surface, buffering the 10-kilometre long tow cables extending into the water with sophisticated sonar systems attached.
The systems scour the never-before studied ocean floor in pitch-black conditions, with the plane believed to have sunk to depths of 4,000 metres (13,100 feet).
“Sunlight doesn’t get more than about 300 or 400 metres into the sea and we’re talking about 4,000 metres depth… literally working in the dark,” Dolan said.
We’ve got the capacity to take video images and photographs of areas, but we will only turn that on when we think we’ve got something that needs a closer look.
The challenges reflect how little is known about the world’s open oceans.
“We know more of the moon than we know about the bottom of our oceans. The maps that we have of the moon are 25 times better than the maps we have of our oceans,” oceanographer Erik van Sebille, of Imperial College London and an adjunct lecturer at Australia’s University of New South Wales, told AFP.
The mapping of the ocean floor in the MH370 zone and other areas could eventually yield insights into sea life, habitat, and even mining potential, he said.
So far, 2,000-metre cliffs, volcano clusters, undersea mountains, ridges and valleys — similar to land features — have been discovered in the area MH370 is thought to have come down, Dolan said.
The probing of such a vast and remote area means officials have broken new ground while trying to ensure reliable data is recorded, the search chief added.
“We’ve probably taken a step forward there (on the) quality, including the quality assurance of the data,” Dolan said.
The lessons are… that the planning and coordination of this is complex and requires a lot of effort. We drew extensively on the experience of our French colleagues with Air France 447, so we learnt from them. We’ll be able to pass on (our lessons) to others who may come after us.
The MH370 probe has also helped prove the effectiveness of the next generation of search tools, including synthetic aperture sonar — which collects higher-resolution readings.
Dolan remains confident the more than 200-strong international team working to find the jet will be successful, but cautioned: “Because of the nature of the (satellite data) calculations, there’s no absolute guarantee it’s there, just very likely.”
Van Sebille likens the search to looking for a set of house keys lost in London in complete darkness.
“That’s the kind of scale that you have to work with. But of course if you don’t try at all, you are certain not to find it,” he said.
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No mention in the article of the false and misleading information provided by Inmarsat, the British satellite company charged with providing evidence re the flights disappearance. Why did this private company provide false information? Very interesting.
No mention in the article of Boeings refusal to comment on the fly from the ground system believed to be installed on the aircraft which allowed the aircraft to be flown from a computer on the ground and the inherent security problems with the system as outlined in many reports.
No mention of the powerful military radar at Diego Garcia which would have picked up the airplane and would know where exactly the craft is.
Stinks of a cover up.
Is that you Frank?
What about the air traffic recordings of MH17 that still haven’t been released? .The details given of MH370 and MH17 are not what they seem.
The details were given out a long time ago regarding MH17. The entire recordings have not been released which is standard procedure in an ongoing investigation.
Maybe the plane is in the volcano?
Breaking news ,,they found volcano’s and mountains! Who comes up with these headlines ?
Looks more and more like pilot suicide unfortunately. Just did not want to be found.
Begins turn in ATC in no man’s land where he was handed off and just did not contact the next ATC.
Flies inch perfect along the Thai to the island of penang and does a hooking turn around the island that would mean taking a long last look at the island where the pilot grew up. Then turns and heads south to watery grave.
How was he not stopped?? Well Co pilot could have gone to toilet and got locked out. Post 9/11 it’s not easy to get inside. Then he would also have the knowledge to go into avionics bay and start pulling out circuits for transponder. The bay is under cockpit and it’s just pull up trap door.
This is what happened but of course they can’t confirm this till they find it
Charles. Wreckage? Bodies?
Why would their be?? Sure it was weeks before they even began to consider the possibilities. Wreckage becomes waterlogged and goes down. Bodies sink too. You rise up about 7 day mark due to gases but when you sink first and you go 5000 feet down all gasses are pushed out of body. Your not coming back up.
Other thing was as he had flown it that far and being meticulous he probably tried to land it on water. This would also serve to stop alot of debris so he and the people he would murder would rest together never found.
Sad but that’s what happened
Probably the most bizzare event of 2014.
That and the trickle down water fiasco!
They’ve found underwater volcanos and cliffs and ridges mining companies must be wetting themselves.
Freescale semiconductor cloaking technology on board. ?
I remember flying back from honeymoon in florida at night and suffering turbulence over the Atlantic, kept thinking about that air France plane that disappeared, there were a few irish people on that plane that flight and I was terrified watching the computer screen that it could be me crashing into the dark ocean to a watery grave,I vowed never to fly again and I never have,I was never a great flyer anyway but that sealed it for me,I’ll never set foot on a plane again
9 red thumbs,must be a lot of Ryanair staff on the journal this morning
Flying is actually the safest way of travelling
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