Malaysia Flight MH370 Indian Ocean Search Continues
Every day these P3 Orions, a design dating back 50 years, leave a small airbase on the western edge of Australia, heading out to join the search – and more keep arriving. These are from Japan. China, too, is sending substantial forces. These Ilyushin Jets are already in Australia and more will follow; all this to maximize the chance of locating possible debris that’s already been seen in satellite images.
TONY ABOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: We have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope – no more than hope, no more than hope – that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft.
Satellite information gleaned from bursts sent for hours after Flight MH370’s last radio contact makes experts think it ended up in this area: 1,400 square miles of the inhospitable Indian Ocean, some 1,500 miles from Perth. American and Chinese satellites have spotted what could be sections of the plane. We’re still awaiting details of the new sighting. The only way to confirm this is to find it. That’s what this New Zealand Air Force P3 is trying to do. The plane is bristling with high-tech surveillance equipment but this kind of searching relies on something more basic: the human eye.
A MAN: We’ve been flying for just over three hours now and the plane will shortly descend to just a few hundred feet above the sea. The crew behind me will then move to the windows and start looking out as the aircraft zigzags backwards and forwards across some of the most remote branches of ocean you can find, anywhere on this planet.
We drop down to just above the sea and the crew concentrates at the windows, looking for anything out of the ordinary amid the waves.
CAPTAIN BRETT McKENZIE: It’s very tough. You’re traveling in an aircraft that’s doing 200 miles an hour and you could be as low as 250-200 feet above the water so the wind is whistling past you and you’re looking for an object in amongst the whitecaps of the waves.
The families of those aboard the ill-fated flight, of course, have an urgent need to know what happened. Somewhere out in the Indian Ocean is the answer to this extraordinary mystery, but in all this vastness it may never be found.
Jonathan Head, BBC World News, Perth, Australia.
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