Search enters second month; M'sia prepares for difficult underwater search amid addressing tricky long-term legal issues involving missing passengers
As the hunt for Flight MH370 enters its second month, Malaysia is preparing for a difficult underwater search even as it addresses tricky long-term legal issues involving the missing passengers.
Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's point man in the crisis, said he is deploying more assets soon to the search area after Australian and Chinese search operations failed to pick up new pulse signals after the weekend.
"Once we find the black box, we have to go down deeper. We're not talking about aeroplanes any more, we're not talking about ships any more. We're talking about submersibles," he said in an interview with Singaporean media yesterday.
As concerns mount that the batteries in the black box have exceeded their expected lifespan of 30 days, Hishammuddin said sonars may also be brought in to look for the wreckage.
Legal issues are also being looked at, he added, saying that the Attorney-General is looking into issues of claims by the families, autopsies, and jurisdiction over the study of the black box.
He said it did not matter to Kuala Lumpur whether the black box was kept for investigations in Australia or Malaysia as long as the data was recovered and analysed.
"Personally, I just want to find the truth. I want to know what happened to MH370. Doesn't matter how or who or where but at the end of the day, the world is not so simple and (there are) so many different countries involved."
Earlier yesterday, Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, said the hunt for Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean was at a critical stage, given that the batteries in the black box beacons have already reached the end of their 30-day expected life.
The plane, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished on March 8 and flew thousands of kilometres off its Kuala Lumpur- to-Beijing route.
On Friday and Saturday, China's Haixun 01 vessel detected several pings - electronic signals at the same frequency as a flight data recorder, or black box.
On Sunday, Australia's Ocean Shield resupply vessel carrying a US Navy-owned ping locator picked up signals some 555km from where the Haixun01 detected signals.
Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, downplayed concerns over the cost of the search - expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars, according to experts quoted in a Reuters report. "Cost-wise, I don't see that as something that has been a hindrance until this moment."
The Reuters report yesterday estimated that US$44 million has been spent to deploy ships and aircraft by Australia, China, Vietnam and the United States. That is already nearly equal to the €32 million spent over several months to search for the Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.
This hunt also promises to bring about changes in Malaysia's aviation and military landscape, after its military was forced to reveal radar data to aid the search in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
"Everybody is now relooking their defence capabilities, their relationship between civilian aviation and military aviation," Hishammuddin said. The Straits Times