Latest developments:
Australian PM pledges to continue search
7.40pm: The current lead in the search for MH370 will be exhausted in about a week, says Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, but he pledges to continue searching.
“My determination for Australia is that we will do whatever we reasonably can to resolve the mystery.
“If the current search turns up nothing, we won’t abandon it, we will simply move to a different phase,” he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
He reiterates that he remains confident that searchers are looking at the right place.
The article also mentions other options available if Bluefin-21 fails to find the wreckage, such as searching the same area more intensively or expanding the search area.
Relatives in Beijing stage another walkout
7.05pm: Relatives of the Chinese passengers on-board MH370 have staged yet another walkout this morning following a botched technical briefing, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.
It says the video conference in Beijing was delayed by 20 minutes and when the video feed finally came through, there was no audio.
This sent 200 relatives shouting "liar" and storming out the Lido Hotel meeting room.
A representative of the family members, Jiang Hui, told SCMP that Malaysian authorities have promised to provide an update every five minutes and fly to Beijing on the day after any significant development.
"But they had not sent anyone over for the past 13 days… We have many technical questions and other questions that we wish to talk with them about it face to face.
"It’s difficult to understand each other correctly through video conferencing, which, to make things worse, has to rely on translators," he was quoted as saying.
Lawsuits best heard by country handling probe
6.15pm: While some lawyers are persuading relatives of those on board MH370 to bring their case to US courts where compensations claims can run into the millions, an Associated Press (AP) article points out such suits are likely to be rejected.
The report says US courts have in the past ruled that it would be more convenient for the case to be heard in the country the crash occurred or where the investigation is taking place, because it is easier to obtain evidence and witnesses.
“Courts with crowded dockets are likely to dismiss foreign plaintiffs where there are language problems, esoteric laws and/or missing witnesses,” Fordham University emeritus professor of law Joseph Sweeny tells the AP.
An exception, he says, is unless wreckage can be found and used to build a case against the missing aircraft’s US manufacturer Boeing.
Malaysia earns praise from Afghanistan
5.30pm: Malaysia’s handling of the multinational search effort for MH370 has won praise, this time from Afghanistan, says Senate speaker Abu Zahar Ujang.
Abu Zahar says so when speaking to reporters after meeting the Islamic republic’s Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of Constitution (ICOIC) president Gul Rahman Qazi.
“He (Gul Rahman) also prays for all efforts to locate the aircraft to go smoothly, and that we fill find clear clues,” he is quoted as saying by Bernama.
International panel shows M'sia has 'nothing to hide'
4.50pm: Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein says Malaysia will form an international expert panel of inquiry to investigate MH370 and prove that Malaysia has been transparent in its handling of the crises.
"The cabinet will be discussing a paper with regard to an expert panel of inquiry that is going to be set up as part of the ongoing process of transparency to show the world that Malaysia has nothing to hide...
"We are forming a panel of inquiry consisting of experts from around the world... Who are respected, credible and who will make decisions and investigate without fear or favour,” he says.
The cabinet is due to make a decision on the size of the panel today before making an announcement, he adds.
Read more here.
Note - The minister later, in a Twitter posting, states that the presentation of the paper on the international investigation team, scheduled for cabinet today, has been rescheduled for next week.
'I meant one second to take action, not solve mystery'
4pm: PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim slams Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for supposedly “manipulating” his statement in an interview with China’s Southern Weekly.
He claims that the quote attributed to him had been mistranslated and he did not mean he would solve the MH370 mystery “in one second if he was prime minister”.
Instead, he says he actually meant he would have taken "one second to take immediate action and ensure flow of information".
Read the full story here.
Third time the charm?
2.18pm: The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 was forced to resurface this morning to rectify a technical issue, says the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC).
In a statement, it says the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 has been redeployed for its third attempt to scour the seabed for any sign of Flight MH370 wreckage.
“It is currently continuing its underwater search,” it says, and adds that initial analysis of the data downloaded this morning from the underwater drone’s second dive indicates “no significant detections”.
Questions regarding China's role
1.10pm: US-based media outlets are raising questions regarding China’s role in the search for MH370, asking whether it had done more harm than good.
Among the latest is financial daily Wall Street Journal. It points out that despite China’s "forceful" response to find the plane, it had earlier missed a meeting on how to coordinate search and rescue (SAR) in the ocean.
The meeting was held by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Singapore to draw up regional plans for handling a multinational rescue effort in event of a downed aircraft at sea. It was the second year in a row that China was absent.
“Since the (MH370) plane disappeared nearly 40 days ago, people involved in the search say China proved a determined and forceful first responder, if sometimes overconfident, disorganized and incorrect.
“As an outsider to deep political and military alliances built over decades by Washington, China has demanded an inside track to information but has shown less appetite to partner with the broader 26-nation coalition,” the report adds.
It also notes the Chinese patrol vesselHaixun 01 had used the wrong equipment to detect black box pings, generating a false lead on April 5, and then supposedly relayed the information to Beijing instead of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in Australia.
Another publication that has raised similar questions about China's role is the New York Times. A commentator on CNN however, is more sympathetic.
“I just find it a little distasteful because in the recent past, China has been criticised for not being involved at all, so we can’t have it both ways.
“There is enough frustration going around now that no one has been successful in locating this aircraft,” former US representative to Nato Nicholas Burns tells CNN.
M'sia has right to black box, but Australia has the right tools
1pm: As searchers inch closer towards finding MH370’s black box, debate ensues on who has custody rights over it.
According to Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention 1944, that right goes to Malaysia as lead investigator.
However, the same document also stipulates that Malaysia must arrange for the black box’s data to be read out "without delay", and should be handed to another country if it does not have the required expertise.
This would most likely mean that MH370’s black box would go to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s (ATSB) labs in Canberra.
Yesterday, Bernama reports that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nancy Shukri said Malaysia has only asked Australia to lead the search and rescue effort, while the authority to investigate rests with Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had said he doesn’t mind which country gets custody of the black box, although Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail has travelled to the UK to discuss custody issues.
'They will find the wreck of MH370'
11.30am: While JACC chief Angus Houston remains cautiously optimistic that MH370 would be found, an underwater salvage expert claims that finding the wreck is inevitable.
“While the government hasn't announced that yet, if somebody asked me 'technically do they have enough information to say that (they found the wreckage site)?', my answer is unequivocally, yes.
“They have got four very, very good detections with the right spectrum of noise coming from them and it can't be from anything else,” the Australian daily Sydney Morning Herald quotes Blue Water Recoveries director David Mearns as telling the broadcaster ABC.
The report says Mearns had previously found the wreck of the naval cruiser HMAS Sydney 66 years after it was lost to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and also contributed in the search for Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic in 2009.
'No country has pulled out of SAR'
11am: Not a single country has pulled out of the search for MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean since operations began on March 17, says Joint Agency Coordination (JACC) chief Angus Houston.
However, after 40 days of searching without any sign of floating wreckage, he says it is about time to reconsider the need for further surface searches.
“So what is normal in these circumstances is that the partners, the countries, get together, consult, and decide what needs to be done next. And I think that consultation will take place later this week,” he says during an interview with Chinese media outlets in Perth on Monday.
Countries currently involved in the Australian-led search effort include China, US, UK, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Joint Taskforce 658 commander Peter Leavy tells the same interview that P-3 Orion aircraft will continue to drop sonobuoys for several days in hopes of hearing signals from the black box pinger, but that, too, will soon cease when the black box batteries are undoubtedly dead.
He assures that the sonobuoys will not interfere with the underwater search by autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21.
Houston also tells the Chinese press that the starting point of the underwater search is the most likely place where the wreckage may be found based on four pings that ADV Ocean Shield previously detected.
To a question whether Bluefin-21’s efforts is the last chance to find MH370, Houston said if nothing is found, then JACC would have to discuss with other stakeholders on what to do next.
Read the full interview transcript here.
Bunga Mas Enam to spend 3 months at site
10am: The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) auxiliary vessel Bunga Mas Enam is now underway to join the search for MH370, according to the New Straits Times.
The supply vessel left Lumut at 8.40am today and is due to arrive in the search area on April 25, and is slated to spend three months there.
The report adds that Bunga Mas Enam is the seventh RMN vessel sent to scour the Indian Ocean.
Search of seabed may take two months
9.15am: To recap, the US Navy-supplied autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 went on its maiden mission late-Monday.
It is equipped with side-scan sonar to map 40 square kilometres of the sea floor for any signs of wreckage, but was programmed to maintain a height of 30 metres above the sed bed as it cruises along.
However - six hours into the mission - it reached an area where the depth was greater than the AUV’s maximum depth rating of 4.5 kilometres, and a safety feature forced it to resurface early. Nothing of interest was found in this search.
According to CNN yesterday, the navy’s salvage chief Mark Matthews says excessively deep water was encountered at the extreme corner of the search area, so the area for the next search will be slightly shifted away.
Bluefin-21’s typical sonar-mapping mission would involve two hours spent reaching the ocean floor, 16 hours of mapping, two hours to resurface, and four hours to download the data, totalling about 24 hours.
Its sonar can map 300 to 400 metres to each side of the torpedo-shape drone, and it travels back and forth pattern like a lawn-mower in order to gather enough data for a map of the area.
It has been warned that the process could take up to two months, and does not guarantee finding MH370.
Underwater drone on second dive
6.40am: The underwater drone Bluefin-21 has gone on its second mission last night, after a botched search attempt for MH370 on the day before. Each mission will take approximately 24 hours to complete.
On the ocean surface, 14 aircraft and 11 ships will be participating in the visual search for debris from the missing jet, covering an area of 55,151 square kilometres.
Isolated showers are expected in the search area today, along with sea swells up to two metres and visibility of about five kilometres.
Background:
- Relatives in Beijing walk out of briefing
- M'sia to form international panel, proof of transparency
- Bluefin dive aborted yet again
- Nothing significant in AUV data from second dive
- Shipwreck finder confident of wreckage find
- M'sian navy's Bunga Mas Enam enroute to search site
Australian PM pledges to continue search
7.40pm: The current lead in the search for MH370 will be exhausted in about a week, says Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, but he pledges to continue searching.
“My determination for Australia is that we will do whatever we reasonably can to resolve the mystery.
“If the current search turns up nothing, we won’t abandon it, we will simply move to a different phase,” he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
He reiterates that he remains confident that searchers are looking at the right place.
The article also mentions other options available if Bluefin-21 fails to find the wreckage, such as searching the same area more intensively or expanding the search area.
Relatives in Beijing stage another walkout
7.05pm: Relatives of the Chinese passengers on-board MH370 have staged yet another walkout this morning following a botched technical briefing, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.
It says the video conference in Beijing was delayed by 20 minutes and when the video feed finally came through, there was no audio.
This sent 200 relatives shouting "liar" and storming out the Lido Hotel meeting room.
A representative of the family members, Jiang Hui, told SCMP that Malaysian authorities have promised to provide an update every five minutes and fly to Beijing on the day after any significant development.
"But they had not sent anyone over for the past 13 days… We have many technical questions and other questions that we wish to talk with them about it face to face.
"It’s difficult to understand each other correctly through video conferencing, which, to make things worse, has to rely on translators," he was quoted as saying.
Lawsuits best heard by country handling probe
6.15pm: While some lawyers are persuading relatives of those on board MH370 to bring their case to US courts where compensations claims can run into the millions, an Associated Press (AP) article points out such suits are likely to be rejected.
The report says US courts have in the past ruled that it would be more convenient for the case to be heard in the country the crash occurred or where the investigation is taking place, because it is easier to obtain evidence and witnesses.
“Courts with crowded dockets are likely to dismiss foreign plaintiffs where there are language problems, esoteric laws and/or missing witnesses,” Fordham University emeritus professor of law Joseph Sweeny tells the AP.
An exception, he says, is unless wreckage can be found and used to build a case against the missing aircraft’s US manufacturer Boeing.
Malaysia earns praise from Afghanistan
5.30pm: Malaysia’s handling of the multinational search effort for MH370 has won praise, this time from Afghanistan, says Senate speaker Abu Zahar Ujang.
Abu Zahar says so when speaking to reporters after meeting the Islamic republic’s Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of Constitution (ICOIC) president Gul Rahman Qazi.
“He (Gul Rahman) also prays for all efforts to locate the aircraft to go smoothly, and that we fill find clear clues,” he is quoted as saying by Bernama.
International panel shows M'sia has 'nothing to hide'
4.50pm: Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein says Malaysia will form an international expert panel of inquiry to investigate MH370 and prove that Malaysia has been transparent in its handling of the crises.
"The cabinet will be discussing a paper with regard to an expert panel of inquiry that is going to be set up as part of the ongoing process of transparency to show the world that Malaysia has nothing to hide...
"We are forming a panel of inquiry consisting of experts from around the world... Who are respected, credible and who will make decisions and investigate without fear or favour,” he says.
The cabinet is due to make a decision on the size of the panel today before making an announcement, he adds.
Read more here.
Note - The minister later, in a Twitter posting, states that the presentation of the paper on the international investigation team, scheduled for cabinet today, has been rescheduled for next week.
'I meant one second to take action, not solve mystery'
4pm: PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim slams Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for supposedly “manipulating” his statement in an interview with China’s Southern Weekly.
He claims that the quote attributed to him had been mistranslated and he did not mean he would solve the MH370 mystery “in one second if he was prime minister”.
Instead, he says he actually meant he would have taken "one second to take immediate action and ensure flow of information".
Read the full story here.
Third time the charm?
2.18pm: The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 was forced to resurface this morning to rectify a technical issue, says the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC).In a statement, it says the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 has been redeployed for its third attempt to scour the seabed for any sign of Flight MH370 wreckage.
“It is currently continuing its underwater search,” it says, and adds that initial analysis of the data downloaded this morning from the underwater drone’s second dive indicates “no significant detections”.
Questions regarding China's role
1.10pm: US-based media outlets are raising questions regarding China’s role in the search for MH370, asking whether it had done more harm than good.
Among the latest is financial daily Wall Street Journal. It points out that despite China’s "forceful" response to find the plane, it had earlier missed a meeting on how to coordinate search and rescue (SAR) in the ocean.The meeting was held by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Singapore to draw up regional plans for handling a multinational rescue effort in event of a downed aircraft at sea. It was the second year in a row that China was absent.
“Since the (MH370) plane disappeared nearly 40 days ago, people involved in the search say China proved a determined and forceful first responder, if sometimes overconfident, disorganized and incorrect.
“As an outsider to deep political and military alliances built over decades by Washington, China has demanded an inside track to information but has shown less appetite to partner with the broader 26-nation coalition,” the report adds.
It also notes the Chinese patrol vesselHaixun 01 had used the wrong equipment to detect black box pings, generating a false lead on April 5, and then supposedly relayed the information to Beijing instead of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in Australia.Another publication that has raised similar questions about China's role is the New York Times. A commentator on CNN however, is more sympathetic.
“I just find it a little distasteful because in the recent past, China has been criticised for not being involved at all, so we can’t have it both ways.
“There is enough frustration going around now that no one has been successful in locating this aircraft,” former US representative to Nato Nicholas Burns tells CNN.
M'sia has right to black box, but Australia has the right tools
1pm: As searchers inch closer towards finding MH370’s black box, debate ensues on who has custody rights over it.
According to Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention 1944, that right goes to Malaysia as lead investigator.However, the same document also stipulates that Malaysia must arrange for the black box’s data to be read out "without delay", and should be handed to another country if it does not have the required expertise.
This would most likely mean that MH370’s black box would go to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s (ATSB) labs in Canberra.
Yesterday, Bernama reports that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nancy Shukri said Malaysia has only asked Australia to lead the search and rescue effort, while the authority to investigate rests with Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had said he doesn’t mind which country gets custody of the black box, although Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail has travelled to the UK to discuss custody issues.
'They will find the wreck of MH370'
11.30am: While JACC chief Angus Houston remains cautiously optimistic that MH370 would be found, an underwater salvage expert claims that finding the wreck is inevitable.
“While the government hasn't announced that yet, if somebody asked me 'technically do they have enough information to say that (they found the wreckage site)?', my answer is unequivocally, yes.“They have got four very, very good detections with the right spectrum of noise coming from them and it can't be from anything else,” the Australian daily Sydney Morning Herald quotes Blue Water Recoveries director David Mearns as telling the broadcaster ABC.
The report says Mearns had previously found the wreck of the naval cruiser HMAS Sydney 66 years after it was lost to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and also contributed in the search for Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic in 2009.
'No country has pulled out of SAR'
11am: Not a single country has pulled out of the search for MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean since operations began on March 17, says Joint Agency Coordination (JACC) chief Angus Houston.
However, after 40 days of searching without any sign of floating wreckage, he says it is about time to reconsider the need for further surface searches.“So what is normal in these circumstances is that the partners, the countries, get together, consult, and decide what needs to be done next. And I think that consultation will take place later this week,” he says during an interview with Chinese media outlets in Perth on Monday.
Countries currently involved in the Australian-led search effort include China, US, UK, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Joint Taskforce 658 commander Peter Leavy tells the same interview that P-3 Orion aircraft will continue to drop sonobuoys for several days in hopes of hearing signals from the black box pinger, but that, too, will soon cease when the black box batteries are undoubtedly dead.He assures that the sonobuoys will not interfere with the underwater search by autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21.
Houston also tells the Chinese press that the starting point of the underwater search is the most likely place where the wreckage may be found based on four pings that ADV Ocean Shield previously detected.
To a question whether Bluefin-21’s efforts is the last chance to find MH370, Houston said if nothing is found, then JACC would have to discuss with other stakeholders on what to do next.
Read the full interview transcript here.
Bunga Mas Enam to spend 3 months at site
10am: The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) auxiliary vessel Bunga Mas Enam is now underway to join the search for MH370, according to the New Straits Times.
The supply vessel left Lumut at 8.40am today and is due to arrive in the search area on April 25, and is slated to spend three months there.The report adds that Bunga Mas Enam is the seventh RMN vessel sent to scour the Indian Ocean.
Search of seabed may take two months
9.15am: To recap, the US Navy-supplied autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 went on its maiden mission late-Monday.
It is equipped with side-scan sonar to map 40 square kilometres of the sea floor for any signs of wreckage, but was programmed to maintain a height of 30 metres above the sed bed as it cruises along.However - six hours into the mission - it reached an area where the depth was greater than the AUV’s maximum depth rating of 4.5 kilometres, and a safety feature forced it to resurface early. Nothing of interest was found in this search.
According to CNN yesterday, the navy’s salvage chief Mark Matthews says excessively deep water was encountered at the extreme corner of the search area, so the area for the next search will be slightly shifted away.
Bluefin-21’s typical sonar-mapping mission would involve two hours spent reaching the ocean floor, 16 hours of mapping, two hours to resurface, and four hours to download the data, totalling about 24 hours.Its sonar can map 300 to 400 metres to each side of the torpedo-shape drone, and it travels back and forth pattern like a lawn-mower in order to gather enough data for a map of the area.
It has been warned that the process could take up to two months, and does not guarantee finding MH370.
Underwater drone on second dive
6.40am: The underwater drone Bluefin-21 has gone on its second mission last night, after a botched search attempt for MH370 on the day before. Each mission will take approximately 24 hours to complete.On the ocean surface, 14 aircraft and 11 ships will be participating in the visual search for debris from the missing jet, covering an area of 55,151 square kilometres.
Isolated showers are expected in the search area today, along with sea swells up to two metres and visibility of about five kilometres.
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 the plane intentionally turned back and altered its course shortly after cutting communications with tower controllers for unknown reasons.
- "Groundbreaking" data analysis on the six last 'pings' between MH370 and British company Inmarsat's communications satellite has yielded clues to the aircraft's position and heading, leading investigators to narrow down the search area to the south Indian Ocean.
- Australia leads the search in the south Indian Ocean. As of March 30, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) is tasked with overseeing the operations, led by retired air marshal and former defence chief Angus Houston.
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