Possible MH370 search timeline blows out again

The $180 million search is now expected to continue until as late as January or February.

Ann airplane part found washed ashore the island of Mauritius in May. Picture: AAP.

The search timetable for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has again blown out to as late as February, as poor weather conditions and “resupplying” search vessels drag on the mission.

A newly published update from the Australian authorities leading the search for the Boeing 777 — which disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board — says it now expects the $180 million mission to conclude in January or February, some six months later than was originally anticipated.

The hunt for the missing flight, which was originally scheduled to conclude by July, has entered the last 10,000sq km of its designated 120,000sq km search area.

But the search party has been hampered by poor weather conditions throughout the winter months and the inaction of the Chinese search and rescue vessel Dong Hai Jiu.

In its latest update on the search, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said the Dong Hai Jiu 101 would soon be taking to the seas to backtrack and scour already-scanned areas for signs of debris.

“Phoenix International Holding’s Remora III remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is being remobilised on the vessel,” The JACC said in its weekly update.

“The ROV is equipped with a range of instruments including video cameras. The ROV will be tasked to reacquire and investigate, through video imaging, a range of sonar contacts which have been identified during previous deep tow operations.”

The JACC said that while none of the sonar contacts targeted for reacquisition exhibit the characteristics of a typical aircraft debris field, some exhibited man-made properties and therefore must be investigated further to be positively eliminated.

As revealed by The Australian last month, the Dong Hai Jiu 101 has hardly performed any actual search operations in the seven months since it first came to Fremantle.

Australian government officials have refused to release documents revealing how many days the Chinese government vessel had conducted search operations.

The deputy secretary of the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Judith Zielke, knocked back a Freedom of Information request from The Australian on the grounds that to release the document “would cause harm to the Australian government’s ­relationship with other governments”.

Some security experts ­believe the Chinese government vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101, which arrived in Fremantle in February officially to join the search for MH370, could be spending its time gathering ­intelligence on Australian military activity in what they ­describe as “target rich” Western Australia.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 has spent most of the time in or just off Fremantle for one stated reason or another, or on “weather standby” in the southern Indian Ocean or “north of the search area”.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 is a major component of China’s $20m contribution to the $180m effort to find the Boeing 777.