The combined search teams from Malaysia, Australia and China currently looking for possible wreckage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 in the Indian Ocean are no longer interested in expanding its search zone if it does not find any new leads in its ongoing hunt.
The current search zone covers an area of 60,000 square kilometers and it was decided by the ministers of the three countries in April that they will expand the area to another 60,000 square kilometers if nothing turns up.
The Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people onboard and nearly 15 months after the incident, no trace of the plane has been discovered yet despite the continued search of the combined teams from the three countries.
For wanting perhaps to limit the wasting of resources, efforts, and time of its respective personnel, the three countries have decided to change their plan by saying that the current search zone would no longer be expanded unless new leads are found, reports 9news.com.au.
Expensive search
According to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre tasked with finding the plane, the expansion of the search zone to another 60,000 square kilometers would no longer happen in the absence of credible new information that will lead to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft.
The ongoing search has already cost the Australian government $100 million while Malaysia has reportedly spent $60 million. China has not yet disclosed how much it had already spent for participating in the search because most of the 239 passengers onboard the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 were Chinese.
As early as January this year, Malaysian authorities have already presumed dead the 239 passengers onboard the missing plane. But the relatives of those who were on the plane have refused to accept the verdict and went on to criticize Malaysia’s handling of the situation and even questioned the kind of search it is doing for the missing plane in the southern Indian Ocean.
Only the important parts
While investigators have yet to find any debris of the missing plane, 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.
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.
There are plenty of credible leads which the ATSB ignored because they did not fit their satellite tracking theory. These debris impacted 425nm south of the current seabed search and ATSB believe their theory is more valid than actual evidence
It is the investigation which lacks credibility.
There is also $2.5 billion of unclaimed insurance cover for MH370 search & recovery. The Australian Government refuses to claim insurance money to reimburse Australian taxpayers for the cost.
Two objects, one 80ft (24m) and another 75ft (22.5m) were sighted with 122 further objects floating between them. French satellite technicians noted these objects had an extremely high refractive index like polished metal. About 124km SSW another patch of 300+ objects were also spotted by Malaysian officials on the JIT committee demanded that the JACC ground search planes and shift the search away further north.
When such obvious clues are ignored there is something seriously wrong with the investigation.