Search for MH370 may conclude by mid-year

SYDNEY — The multinational team hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will not expand the current search zone in the southern Indian Ocean without new clues about the wreck’s exact location.

More than 80,000 sq km of seabed have already been scoured, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said yesterday in its weekly update.

The search of the full 120,000 sq km area will be completed by the middle of the year, the bureau added.

The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China need “credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft” before the search area can be expanded further, said the bureau in the statement.

Flight 370 was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014 when it disappeared with 239 people, most of them Chinese nationals, on board.

The only solid evidence so far from the missing Boeing 777 plane is a wing component that washed up last July on Reunion Island, some 3,800km from the search zone.

Last month, new analysis of satellite communications and the plane’s flight path narrowed down the most likely wreck site, and ships have been focused since then on the southern end of the search zone.

Although the search effort has not yet turned up any trace of MH370, one of the search vessels recently found a shipwreck some 3,700m deep in the ocean. The wreck was likely to be a steel or iron-hulled ship dating from the turn of the 19th century.

“On December 19, 2015, an anomalous sonar contact was identified in the course of the underwater search, with analysis suggesting the object was likely to be man-made, probably a shipwreck,” said the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

This is the second shipwreck found during the hunt for the ill-fated jetliner.

In May last year, searchers found an anchor and other objects believed to be man-made, as well as what were thought to be lumps of coal.

Investigators believe MH370 ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, resulting in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.

Speculation on the cause of the plane’s disappearance has focused primarily on a possible mechanical or structural failure, a hijacking or terror plot, or rogue pilot action.

Despite the satellite evidence pointing to the plane going down, many Chinese relatives of those on board remain sceptical and are convinced their loved ones are alive, perhaps being held at an unknown location.

Analysts have said that only by locating the crash site and recovering the black box will authorities be able to solve the mystery of why the plane went down. AGENCIES