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PM Abbott rubbishes claim plane landed elsewhere
Published:  Apr 24, 2014 9:40 AM
Updated: 10:35 AM

Latest developments:

  • Australia sticking to search area, dismisses report plane landed elsewhere

 

  • Everything pointed to Indian Ocean, says analyst who co-led Air France search
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  • MAS pays 96 pct claims by families
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  • 90 pct seabed scoured, nothing of interest detected
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  • Authorities say objects washed ashore not from MH370
  • Follow us as we bring the latest updates and coverage for the search of Flight MH370:

    Which deep sea asset will join hunt for MH370?

    6.33pm: With only 10 percent left of the search area for Bluefin-21 to comb, there is now speculation over other assets investigators can deploy.

    Among them is a remote operated vehicle (ROV) manufactured by Total Marine Technology (TMT) called Typhoon, its chief executive officer Paul Colley tells Berita Harian .

    Unlike the Bluefin-21, the Typhoon has reflectors, sonar, lights and 16 cameras which can send information in real time to vessels via fibre optic cable. Typhoon can dive for four weeks before surfacing, unlike Bluefin-21 which needs to surface every 24 hours.

    However, the ROV has limited movement in the water and may not be as effective in a large search area.

    Other possibilities is the Remus 6000 - an unmanned autonomous submarine which located Air France Flight 447 wreckage in more than four kilometre-deep water in the Pacific Ocean, Time reports.

    An even more superior option, it says, is the US Navy's Orion which can provide round the clock real time imagery without resurfacing.

    Abbott: We still believe pings from plane black box

    6pm: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott dismisses a New Straits Times report citing investigators that the plane may have landed instead of crashing into the Southern Indian Ocean, China news agency Xinhua reports.

    "Our expert advice is that the aircraft went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

    "We have identified a probable impact zone which is about 700 kilometres long, about 80 kilometres wide and based on the detections from what we still believe was the black box recorder," he says at a press conference in Canberra.

    Finder clings to belief washed up metal from MH370

    5.42pm: Photos of debris found on a beach near Augusta, 300 kilometres from Perth in Western Australia, shows what appears to be a metal sheet with rivets.

    The item, dismissed as unrelated to MH370, was found by Mat Fraklin and his son on Monday four kilometres from Augusta.

    "I still believe it is a piece of aircraft because they won't give it back to me," he is quoted by Fairfax media as saying.

    Families: How to face facts when there are no debris?

    5pm: Families of Chinese passengers accuse the Malaysian government of breaking promises and lying by allegedly refusing to provide experts to answer technical questions.

    Steve Wang, a passenger's son, tells CNN that Malaysian officials are telling them to "face facts" and "stop asking these questions" when the officials themselves do not know what the facts are in absence of any debris.

    "Even the small debris haven't been found. The plane is missing. How can you move to the next step? You should focus your energy on searching, not looking at the next step or other things like that," he says.

    Meanwhile, aviation analyst David Gallo, who co-led the search for Air France Flight 447 tells CNN that investigators did the right thing in searching at the portion of Indian Ocean they are combing now.

    "It's the place they had to look... Everything pointed to this area," he says.

    He also says that more effort should be placed on combing the ocean floor before moving on.

    Three claims rejected by families

    3.30pm: Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has paid up 96 percent of the expense claims filed by families of Chinese passengers on board, Bernama reports .

    MAS senior vice-president Jaffar Derus Ahmad, however, is quoted saying that three family members have rejected the funds.

    International panel to be finalised next week

    11.45am: To recap, the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has submitted the preliminary report on MH370 to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as per convention which requires it to be filed within a month of incident.

    However, the government has not decided if the report will be released to media but said that all reports on the ongoing probes will be made public eventually .

    Cabinet has approved the formation of an independent international panel of investigators on MH370 to ensure transparency, and appointments will be made next week.

    Reports that families of passengers received a letter claiming that the plane is in Kandahar, Afghanistan has been dismissed as speculation.

    Meanwhile, the government has spoken to Petronas to seek asset assistance in the search and insists on not disclosing the costs of the prolonged search, with acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein saying he “does not look at dollars and cents”.

    Still no sign of wreckage in seabed search

    7.23am: Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) reports that up 11 military aircraft and 11 ships will search for the missing plane today in an area totalling 49,567 square kilometres, approximately 1584 kilometres north west of Perth.

    The Bluefin-21 search submarine has completed 90 percent of the underwater search area but nothing of interest has yet been found.

    The JACC also confirms the items washed ashore are unrelated to MH370.

    "The ATSB has advised that after examining detailed photographs of material washed ashore 10 kilometres east of Augusta, it is satisfied it is not a lead in relation to the search for missing flight MH370," it says in a statement.

    MH370 link ruled out

    6.30am: Objects recovered from Augusta, West Australia have been dismissed as potential wreckage from MH370, says Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) chief commissioner Martin Dolan.

    “We have carefully examined detailed pictures taken for us by police and we are satisfied it is not a lead,” the The West Australian quotes him saying on ABC Radio this morning.

    The objects were recovered from a remote beach in Augusta and then handed over to the local police yesterday.

    The objects have been variously described as being “plastic sheets”, or “an alloy type of metal”, or “1.8 metres long and has rivets and a fibreglass coating” in different reports, and was initially suspected to be debris from the missing aircraft.

    Background:

    • The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200ER aircraft went missing not long after taking off from KL International Airport in the early hours of March 8, with 12 crew members and 227 passengers.

     

  • Authorities have determined that the plane intentionally turned back and altered its course shortly after cutting communications with tower controllers for unknown reasons and, based on satellite data, have estimated its last position to be in the south Indian Ocean.
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  • The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 was deployed on April 14 to conduct an undersea search up to depth of 4,800m, after searchers stopped using the pinger locator as the plane's black boxes beacon batteries have long exceeded their 30-day certified battery life.
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  • The undersea area being searched now is where ADV Ocean Shield had picked up two pings similar to black boxes on April 5 and two more on April 8 but failed to reacquire them again with the pinger locator.
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