While investigators have yet to find any debris of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared in March 2014, the combined search and investigating team from Malaysia, Australia and China has said that they would most likely leave the plane wreckage on the ocean floor if and when they find it.
They said that they would just get the parts that would be required for the probe and not the entire wreckage. Those likely parts are the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder first and foremost as those equipment would reveal all the details about the ill-fated flight, notes DNA India.
The recovery plan was disclosed by a spokesperson from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in the event that the wreckage of the missing aircraft is found on the ocean bed. He added that the plan was actually agreed upon by the Ministers of the three countries involved in the search and retrieval operations in a meeting held late in April.
The search teams have been scouring the waters as far as the southern Indian Ocean but they still have not found anything at all about the missing plane.
Apart from being too laborious and expensive, the search and investigating team believe that recovering the entire aircraft from the ocean floor if and when they eventually find it is unnecessary.
Shipwreck instead of plane wreckage
In mid-May, the search vessel Fugro Equator looking for possible wreckage of the mysterious Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean has found on the ocean floor a 19th century shipwreck instead of the supposedly ill-fated plane.
The deep tow system of the Fugro Equator has detected a cluster of small sonar contacts of potential interest near the so-called 7th arc before another Fugro ship was dispatched to look more closely into the discovery.
The second Fugro ship subsequently dispatched underwater drones to investigate the potential lead. When the drones came back, the images that they brought forth were that of an anchor as well as a destroyed hull of a ship. The wreck was also found to be lying on the ocean floor at a depth of 3,900 meters.
Peter Foley, Director of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau that is also part of the operational search team for MH370, said that they were very cautious about the recent discovery. He said that although the characteristics of the sonar contacts made it unlikely the MH370, they went on with finding it out since the multiple bright reflections also generated interest in a relatively small area of a featureless seabed.
He added that he is a bit disappointed that the sonar data was not able to turn in more positive results leading to the search for MH370 but he assured that the operation shall continue.