Another survey ship will begin mapping the seabed near the Western Australian coast during the week to search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, reported The Associated Press, citing officials on Monday.
Chinese, Australian and Malaysian authorities all met at the west coast port city of Fremantle over the weekend and said they will send a ship to carry out a bathymetric survey of the Indian Ocean floor, which was suggested by Australian air crash investigators, the Australia Joint Agency Coordination Center said in a statement obtained by AP.
The alleged location of the missing plane is about 550 miles west of Exmouth, Australia, which is located in the northwestern portion of the country. It’s within international waters, according to the New York Times.
The Chinese was slated to sail to the survey area on Wednesday depending on the weather.
Officials have said that the plane, which had 239 people on board, vanished after veering off course before crashing into the Indian Ocean. The plane disappeared March 8.
However, the initial search for the aircraft has not located any trace of the wrecked aircraft, and officials this month said they would enter a new phase to expand the search. The new search area covers 23,000 square miles and involves mapping the seabed.
An Australian program this week made shocking claims that Malaysian officials let Flight 370 disappear. Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein reportedly said that Malaysian civil aviation authorities called the military to look after the plane but they allegedly let it fly out to sea.
The plane was deemed not hostile and the military didn’t send a plane out. “If (we didn’t) shoot it down, why send it (jet up),” Hussein said, News Limited reported.
Anwar Ibrahim said the military breached the procedures.
“The air force will be alerted and will have to then be flown to that area to either ... guide the plane to land or to leave the Malaysian airspace. They’re standard operating procedure and this was never done,” he said
“Yeah I mean it’s a major scandal here because ... this is of course amounting to a major threat to national security.”
Malaysia Airlines says 1Q loss rose 59 percent
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia Airlines said its net loss expanded 59 percent in the first quarter, hit by loss of revenue from China after the disappearance of Flight 370 two months ago.
The flag carrier said Thursday its net loss surged to 443.4 million ringgit ($137.8 million), up from 278.8 million ringgit in the January-to-March period last year. Revenue however, still rose 1.7 percent to 3.6 billion ringgit ($1.1 billion).
It was the fifth quarterly loss for the carrier, and Malaysia Airlines said the Flight 370 mystery stressed a company that was already struggling with high fuel prices and operational cost.
Sales from China fell 60 percent in March, with a high number of cancellations and a decline in long-haul travel, it said.
Flight 370 went missing March 8 with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing; about two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese.
The crisis surrounding the lost plane has put Malaysia Airlines in a tough financial position and will definitely thwart its plan to return to profit this year.
Last year, the airline’s losses ballooned to 1.17 billion ringgit ($363 million), nearly three times larger than the 433 million ringgit loss in 2012.
Malaysia Airlines said it will review its business models and plans to ensure they are sustainable.
Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Thursday that the government has no plans to provide any financial assistance to bail out Malaysia Airlines.
At an afternoon news conference, he also said Malaysia’s Cabinet endorsed the plans made with China and Australia earlier to shift to a deep-sea phase in the search for the plane, believed to be in the remote Indian Ocean west of Australia.
The first step being taken is to reanalyze the data accumulated so far to identify a more accurate search area. Then the seabed in the refined search area would be mapped, and submersible vehicles most appropriate for the terrain would be deployed to search for the plane.
The current search effort involving a robot submarine is on hold because a defective part must be replaced. The transponder defect inhibits communication between the submersible and the ship from which it is deployed.
The search coordination center said the Ocean Shield ship is taking the Bluefin 21 submersible to Dampier, Western Australia, to get the spare parts, in a journey that could take days.
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