Follow us as we bring the latest updates and coverage for the search of Flight MH370:
3.30pm: Deputy Foreign Minister and Next-of-Kin Committee chairperson Hamzah Zainuddin hold a press conference in Kuala Lumpur after meeting relatives of MH370 passengers.
Below are some of the salient points from the press conference:
- Family members will be proposing a scheme on financial assistance soon, which Hamzah promises to consider at a meeting tomorrow morning.
12pm: The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has scoured half of the underwater search area so far, but it has yet to find any sign of MH370.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) says the drone completed its seventh mission this morning, and is now on its eighth mission, searching the rest of the area.
“The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of a 10-kilometre radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection, which occurred on April 8,” JACC said in a statement this morning.
Meanwhile, the surface search is still going on, with 11 aircraft and 12 ships covering an area of about 48,507 square kilometres, across two areas.
TO RECAP:
The Australian vessel ADV Ocean Shield detected the pings on four separate occasions in the same area, and the sound is found to be consistent with that of a pair of black box pingers.
Although it is likely that pings came from MH370’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - which are each fitted with a pinger - the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) has repeatedly stressed that visual verification is still necessary to confirm that the missing aircraft has been found.
At the moment, the four ping detections are the only leads to the whereabouts of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.
Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the search is at a ‘crucial juncture’ yesterday and today, because that is when MH370’s most-likely final resting place would be searched.
If nothing is found, Hishammuddin said, a review of the operation would be necessary, although he stressed that the search will still go, on albeit with different approaches.
[More to follow]