The search teams looking for the wreckage of the ill-fated Malaysian Airline flight MH 370 are now being accused of missing vital clues that may have lead to the discovery of the missing plane in the ocean floor.
According to experts, the increasing cost of funding the massive search is prompting the search team to do a half-baked job in sifting through thousands of square miles of ocean floor, notes the Express of UK.
The Daily Mail also reported that questions are now emerging over the competence of the search teams, some 16 months after the flight’s disappearance.
Many are saying that the search teams might have used inappropriate equipment in conducting the hunt because it is nearly impossible for the current generation of sonars to miss the wreckage as big as the MH 370.
Sonar images that have been released reportedly show shadowy areas that are large enough to conceal the wreckage of the missing plane.
As a result, there is now a growing clamor for the search teams to release their data. The search teams are part of the collaboration between the governments of Malaysia, China, and Australia. The three governments are also funding the search, whose cost may have gone over $200 million.
As of last month, the 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. Most of the 239 passengers onboard the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 were Chinese when it went missing on March 8 last year.
Down to one ship
From several vessels, the search is now down to one ship. Fugro, the Dutch company tapped to lead the search, admitted that it could have missed the plane because the sonar equipment that they have been using is inappropriate. The company also said that they are trying to cover a big area at once.
However, Australian safety officials debunk Fugro’s claim by saying that the equipment being used has been thoroughly tested.
Maryland-based aircraft recovery expert Steven Saint Amour said that he finds it odd that the collaboration tapped a company that does not have the assets or the track record to do the search right.
This was practically the same notion expressed by French naval officer Paul-Henry Nargeolet who said last month that Fugro does not have the experience in such kind of search because it is a very specialized job. Nargeolet was hired by official investigators to coordinate the search and successful recovery of the Air France flight AF 447 back in 2009.
The French naval officer also opined that the search is a big job and if he was an Australian taxpayer, he would be very angry to see his money being spent the way it appears to have been spent in the search.
On the defensive
Fugro search director Paul Kennedy said that he does not buy into those arguments from so-called experts because the company would rather get on with its work.
The company has also defended its search efforts and record, even citing that they have recently found an uncharted wreck of a 19th-century ship deep down on the ocean floor. Thus far, Fugro has covered 23,000 square miles of the seabed.
In mid-May, the search vessel Fugro Equator looking for possible wreckage of the flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean has found on the ocean floor a 19th-century shipwreck instead of the ill-fated plane.
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. They 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.
I think it is unfair criticism of the crews on search vessels and appears to be a claim leveled by fanatical members of what is called the “Independent Group,” an affiliation of mathematicians & satellite engineers who promoted analysis suggesting the 7th Arc seabed search in the first place. The ATSB analysts & “Independent Group” are so close in fact feeding each other information that they are hard to tell apart.
Having had their predictions & conclusions disproved so stunningly, rather than eat humble pie they have turned upon & attacked those at sea who diligently spent months scouring the seabed. Fact is if it was where they said it was, MH370 would have been found by now.
It is the same “Independent Group” who object that 400+ floating objects seen by satellite about 425nm south of the seabed search could not in their opinion be debris from MH370, yet their opinion has proved fruitless and misleading.
It is time the ATSB shifted the search south and used China’s reverse drift analysis of debris seen in March 2014.