Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

An underwater sonar vehicle used in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 has now been lost to the deep ocean floor after hitting an undersea volcano, Australian officials said Monday.


The "towfish", pulled behind a search ship and fitted with survey instruments, plunged to the bottom of the remote southern Indian Ocean on Sunday.

"The towfish collided with a mud volcano which rises 2,200 metres from the sea floor resulting in the vehicle's tow cable breaking," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) announced.

"The towfish and 4,500 metres of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor," the statement added.

Australia is leading the search for the Boeing-777 that vanished on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard.

The aircraft is thought to have crashed after diverting from its course but the undersea hunt has so far found no sign of it.

Last July, a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, giving the first firm evidence that the flight met a tragic end.

Another barnacle-encrusted piece of metal found in Thailand at the weekend has prompted speculation it too could be from MH370 with a specialist team due to examine it, however ocean current modelling suggests it is unlikely to be from the missing plane.

Australian officials said there were no injuries to crew in Sunday's incident onboard the Fugro Discovery and it was thought that the towfish could be recovered.

The ship was Monday returning to the western Australian port of Fremantle so a replacement cable could be fitted, a journey which is expected to take until Saturday.

"During the journey, the spare towfish on board Fugro Discovery will be readied for future search activities," the JACC statement said.

The key instruments in the towfish are side scan sonar and multi-beam echo sounders that look for man-made objects on the sea floor.

Earlier this month searchers uncovered a 19th century shipwreck deep underwater, their second wreck find in the nearly two-year long mission.

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China's ship to join search for missing MH370 jet in Indian Ocean
Source: Xinhua | January 29, 2016, Friday | ONLINE EDITION

China will join the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 by sending a ship to the search area in the southern Indian Ocean.

Australia's deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced on Friday that the Chinese ship, Dong Hai Jiu 101, will be deployed in February to assist in the Australian-led search operation.

"The Australian government welcomes the Dong Hai Jiu 101 to the search effort and thanks the government of the People's Republic of China for its generous contribution," Truss said in a statement on Friday.

"The ship, offered to (Australian) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by Premier Li Keqiang of the People's Republic of China in November 2015, will undertake search operations in the southern Indian Ocean."

"The ship has recently been refitted and will be equipped with the ProSAS-60 - a 6000-meter depth-rated synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) towed system to be used in search operations."

"The ProSAS-60 will be operated by Phoenix International Holdings and Hydrospheric Solutions. Both companies have experience in the search for MH370 having previously operated on the search vessel GO Phoenix."

"The ship is currently in Singapore for mobilization and is expected to depart for Australia on Sunday (January 31). It will commence operations in the search area towards the end of February," the deputy prime minister said.

Truss, who is also the minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, said "The presence of Dong Hai Jiu 101 will supplement the work of Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Havila Harmony, and returns to four the number of vessels actively searching for MH370 in the 120,000-square kilometer search area."

Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people, including 154 Chinese and six Australians, on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

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PanAsian said:

Airbus 737-300.

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delft said:

There is no such aircraft. MH370 was a Boeing 777-200ER. Those journalists!

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Search for missing flight MH370 gives up possible personal items
By Rebecca Wright, CNN
Updated 6:05 AM ET, Mon June 20, 2016

(CNN)The waters off Madagascar in the Indian Ocean have delivered what debris hunter Blaine Gibson says could be the first personal items belonging to passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Gibson told CNN he also found two possible pieces of debris on a beach near the same place he discovered other pieces of debris that Australian authorities have said "almost certainly" belong to the airliner.

The Malaysian Airlines flight went missing with 239 people on board in March 2014, and despite a two-year search investigation, mystery still surrounds its final resting place.

Personal items
Gibson says he found 15 to 20 possible personal effects, including a small backpack, purse, computer case, phone cases and cabin-sized carry-on type items, on a Madagascar beach between June 7 and June 16.

He says there's nothing to identify who the items belong to, and has sent the images to MH370 families support group to see if anyone recognizes them.

Malaysian and Australian authorities had been notified of the find, he said, and planned to collect them for analysis. Australian authorities said that would be the responsibility of the Malaysians.

MH370 search: Full coverage

The two new pieces of potential debris found include a strip of plastic fiber glass covered in gray paint and a piece of brown plastic fiber glass. Both are about 40 centimeters long.

Mapping the hunt
Gibson says he found them on the island of Nosy Boraha, off the east coast of Madagascar -- the same location where he found three possible plane debris pieces on June 6.

Search zone
Officials from Malaysia, Australia and China are meeting in Kuala Lumpur this week to discuss the search, which has swept vast areas of the ocean floor off the Australian coast.

In a statement issued Monday, the three countries said they've agreed to act together to take decisions relating to the search for MH370.

The statement noted that in April 2015, the countries agreed that -- in the absence of credible new information -- the search would end if the plane wasn't found in the designated search zone.

It's now expected to take until at least August for teams to cover the 120,000 square kilometer search zone, due to recent disruptions from rough weather.

More than 105,000 square kilometers have been searched so far, according to the Australian government's Joint Action Coordination Center.

CNN's Judy Kwon, Chieu Luu, Sandi Sidhu contributed to this report.

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MH370 search to be suspended if plane isn't found soon
By KL Chan and Madison Park, CNN
Updated 7:48 AM ET, Fri July 22, 2016

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN)With less than 10,000 square kilometers left in the search area for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, hopes of finding the plane are fading.

Senior officials announced Friday that the international effort to locate MH370 will be suspended and rethought if the missing plane isn't found in the remaining search area.

"This does not mean we have given up on looking for MH370," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said at a press conference Friday.

Malaysian, Chinese and Australian authorities said they want to see if there is other new information that could help them locate the missing aircraft.

"The decision came not lightly," said Australia's transport minister, Darren Chester. "But in the absence of new credible evidence it is not possible to continue searching. Every effort has been made. We have used the most high tech and the best people for this search."

So far, they've scoured about 110,000 square feet in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, hunting for traces of the passenger jet and the 239 people it was carrying. The multi-million dollar effort consisted of several ships with special equipment scanning sections of the sea floor.

Liow said that cost was not a factor in the decision to suspend the hunt.

The current search is expected to end sometime between October and December, depending on weather and sea conditions, officials said.

When asked if they had been looking in the wrong area, Liow said: "We are looking in the right area based on the experts' view. Based on that, we searched the area."

Families of victims wonder what's next

The prospect of a suspended search left several family members of the MH370 victims at a loss.

"It's great that they said suspend instead of terminate, but in the meantime what are they going to do and how long is this going to be suspended for?" asked Grace Nathan, whose mother was on the plane. "What kind of information will they need to continue the search?"

Zhang Meiling, whose daughter and son-in-law were on board MH370, told CNN that she thought the officials were just making excuses for a job poorly done.

"It's been two years and they couldn't just find anything," she said, sounding angry on the phone. "All I want is to have my family members back. Whoever is holding them now, please free them. We will never give up until they return home."

The plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. All those on board are presumed dead.

Despite assurances that the suspension does not mean a termination of the search, an email sent to families states that "despite the best efforts of all involved, the likelihood of finding the aircraft is fading." The email was sent to the families after ministers from Australia, Malaysia and China convened on Friday.

Nathan wondered if the families would have to finance measures on their own.

"We hope they will continue the search along the African coastline and if they don't, we might start raising money ourselves and seek help from the people who live in those areas to be on the lookout for debris and we can offer them a reward if they find any credible items," said Nathan.

Several pieces of debris have been recovered -- one off the coast of Reunion Island, which sits east of Madagascar, and other pieces in Mauritius, South Africa and Mozambique.

Four pieces of the debris have been determined to be "almost certainly from MH370," according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Those discoveries, however, haven't brought much clarity to the mystery of where the plane may be.

"All debris found does not say where it came from," Liow said. "It is based on the drift patterns. The debris cannot tell us where the plane is."

MH370: Timeline of found parts
March
2016
1
Engine Cowling
Found: Mossel Bay, South Africa
Status: Almost certainly" from MH370

March
2016
2
Main Cabin Interior Panel
Found: Rodrigues Island, Mauritius
Status: "Almost certainly" from MH370

Feb
2016
3
Horizontal Stabilizer
Found: Rodrigues Island, Mauritius
Status: "Almost certainly" from MH370

Dec
2015
4
Flap Track Fairing
Found: Mozambique Beach
Status: "Almost certainly" from MH370

July
2015
5
Flaperon
Found: Reunion Island
Status: Confirmed as from MH370

March
2014
!
MH370 goes missing

Updated June 26, 2016

Journalist KL Chan reported from Kuala Lumpur. CNN's Shen Lu, Juliet Perry and Chieu Luu contributed to this report.

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PanAsian said:

Looks like it will stay a mystery for a while. Handy summary of the debris found.

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