Withdrawal of GO Phoenix team set to deprive search efforts of experience and sophisticated equipment necessary to scan ocean’s bottom.
PETALING JAYA: Resources being utilised in the long-running hunt for the missing flight MH370 will be substantially depleted after tomorrow following the Malaysian government’s cancellation of the contract for GO Phoenix, the most experienced and best-equipped search party engaged for the task, reports the Daily Beast.
The situation raises “serious questions about the commitment of the Malaysian government to the search,” the report says.
“The GO Phoenix, and the experts and equipment aboard are contracted by Malaysia,” Daniel O’Malley, spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) was quoted as saying in an email.
“The Malaysian government has advised that the contract will end with the completion of the current swing,” O’Malley adds, saying however that no explanation has been given for the cancellation.
The American-owned GO Phoenix is noted for having played a significant role in the search and recovery of Air France Flight 447 in 2011, two years after that fateful flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
With its ability to search at depths of up to 20,000 feet, the GO Phoenix’s capabilities have been critical to a search of the southern Indian Ocean, which has shown up an underwater landscape replete with mountains, volcanoes and deep valleys.
O’Malley said that winter conditions presently being experienced by the southern hemisphere will not deter the search from being carried out.
“We have excellent weather forecasting systems for the search area, and will take advantage of the periods of better weather to continue the search,” he was quoted as saying.
Flight MH370 inexplicably disappeared from radar screens on March 8 last year. Yet, the long-running search has been without success despite the use of a drift model projected to find debris over a period of one year.
Explaining why, O’Malley said, “The search in the Indian Ocean did not commence until nine days after the aircraft would have entered the water and in that time any debris would have been significantly dispersed by winds and currents.”
“The initial search targeted an area covering the current underwater search area and thus represented the best chance to identify and recover any floating debris,” he adds.
The Daily Beast, however, calls that answer ‘disingenuous.’
Firstly, it claims that a nine-day delay would have little bearing on a calculation designed to predict the finding of debris over a period of one year.
Secondly, the search area was effectively doubled in April indicating that searchers were by then less sure of the precise area where the flight ended.
“Drift can’t be accurately calculated without a starting point, but the starting point suddenly became a lot less precise,” the report suggests.
In April this year, with more than 70 percent of the original area already searched, the search team agreed to expand the search area by an additional 60,000 square kilometres.
The depletion of resources available for the search will severely affect the chances of recovery, the report speculates.
“The difference is not just numerical,” it says. “The two remaining vessels, the Fugro Discovery and the Fugro Equator lack experience.”
