MH370 search deadline may be extended

The man in charge of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is set to extend the deadline to find the aircraft.

Fugro Discovery faces rough weather while searching for the MH370. Picture: Chris Straddon, ATSB

The man in charge of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is set to extend the deadline to find the missing aircraft to August as wild winds and monster waves slow the operation down.

The hunt for the missing flight has entered the last 13,000sq km of its designated 120,000sq km search area and is scheduled to conclude by July.

But Martin Dolan — the chief of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau leading the $180 million effort on behalf of the Malaysian, Australian and Chinese governments — said it was likely to extend its deadline to early August as wild winter seas and 12m waves hampered investigators’ efforts.

“We have some way to go and our best bet is that we will complete that search late July/early August, depending on unforeseen circumstances,” he said.

Mr Dolan said there was no indication from the Australian, Malaysian or Chinese governments that the search would be expanded once the 120,000sq km area was covered.

“The technical capability is there to continue the search but the resources to do it is a matter for government,” he said.

Last week Mr Dolan acknowledged that Australian air crash investigators’ hopes that the missing Malaysian Airlines would be found were fading fast as time and space ran out.

“At this point there is a diminishing level of confidence that we will find the aircraft,” he said.

“There will be a lot of disappointment if we don’t find it. All the planning for this, all the technical staff and in particular the crews out on the water who have been doing a brilliant job, are going to be hugely disappointed because they have given two years of their life to this. At worst we will know at the end of this process that the area we have searched does not contain the aircraft. At best we will find it.”

In the two years since the plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board, just five pieces of debris believed to come from the aircraft have been found.

Last week two of those pieces — a part of an engine cowling and a panel segment from a main cabin — were confirmed by the ATSB to “almost certainly” come from the missing plane.

Mr Dolan said the discovery of these pieces were vindication that the bureau had been searching in the right place.

“We think we are searching in the right place because each of the locations of the debris was consistent with the drift modelling we’ve done,” he said.

“None of the findings are inconsistent with the analytical work we’ve done to determine the search area.”

Former US airline captain John Cox, who now runs an international air safety consultancy and has participated in several major air crash investigations, agreed.

“This adds evidence that the aeroplane is in the Indian Ocean and will provide the ocean current specialist more data to pinpoint the area of greatest likelihood to search,” he said.

“One of the great mysteries of MH370 is where is the debris? While these are only two pieces, it is debris. It is likely more will be found. MH370 remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.”

Should the search prove fruitless, the ATSB is working on a report for the government that will consider alternative possibilities for what happened to the plane, including the “rogue pilot” theory that the captain of MH370 hijacked his own aircraft and deliberately crashed it into the sea.