Malaysia Airlines: How is the search being carried out?

87098

Malaysia Airlines: How is the search being carried out?
A wide area around Malaysia is being searched for traces of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which went missing on Friday evening en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Some 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations are combing the sea to the east and west of the Malaysian mainland.

The search teams have hundreds of square miles to cover and little information to go on apart from the last known location of the Boeing 777 passenger jet.

No confirmed wreckage has been found and tests showed that two oil slicks in the South China Sea were not related to the aircraft, officials said.

Overview
At a news conference on Monday, Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman gave details of how the search was being carried out.

Map of the area being searched for the missing passenger jet
Mr Rahman showed a map with seven areas (shown in white above) which he said had already been searched by air.

They included the aircraft's final known location, a square area between Vietnam and Malaysia in the South China Sea.

He said ships were now going back over the sectors, checking for any debris missed by the air search.

The areas marked red on the map would be searched in the following days, Mr Rahman said.

As well as possible sightings of wreckage, the search teams will be trying to find the aircraft's emergency locator transmitter (ELT) which is a location beacon.

However aviation experts say ELTs do not always work in the event of a major crash into water.

The plane also has a \"black box\" consisting of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

If immersed in water it should activate a \"pinger\" that can draw investigators to the location, although the signal cannot be detected over long distances.

line break
Which countries are taking part?
Malaysia has deployed 18 aircraft and 27 ships, including the submarine support vessel MV Mega Bakti which is able to detect objects in water at depths of up to 1,000m.

Huge numbers of maritime police, air force and other personnel are also taking part in the hunt.

China, Vietnam, USA, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines are also contributing ships, aircraft and personnel, while other nations such as India have also offered support.

China
The majority of the 239 people on board flight MH370 were Chinese, and Beijing has dispatched nine warships to help in the search and rescue mission.

First to be sent was the frigate Mianyang which was diverted from the Nansha Sea to the south-east of Vietnam. It was joined by the landing craft Jinggangshan and its support vessels.

Destroyer Haikou and amphibious landing ship Kunlunshan set off on Sunday from two southern Chinese ports with a 50-strong marine corps as well as assault boats and rubber dinghies aboard, according to the People's Liberation Army ( PLA) Navy.

They are expected to arrive in the main search area early on Tuesday and Beijing said two specialised ocean rescue boats were also on standby.

Vietnam
Vietnamese helicopter prepares to join search, Phu Quoc (10 March 2014)
Much of Vietnam's equipment is old and Soviet-made
Vietnam has set up command posts at Phu Quoc island - the closest port to the plane's last known location - and Ca Mau airport on the country's southern tip.


On board a Vietnamese search flight
It has dispatched a total of eight ships and seven aircraft and is expected to send more.

Nga Pham, reporter with the BBC's Vietnamese service said personnel from the navy, air force and coastguard were being mobilised.

\"The commitment from the Vietnamese authorities is very big but their problem is the lack of resources and modern equipment,\" she said.

\"The airplanes are very old, they are Soviet-made, they are not equipped to do sophisticated and long-haul investigation.\"

United States
The USS Pinckney
The USS Pinckney carries two MH60 Seahawk helicopters which can search for over 10 hours at a time
The United States has deployed the USS Pinckney and Kidd from the Seventh Fleet, which had been on training and security operations in the South China Sea.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers carry MH60 Seahawk helicopters, which can operate missions lasting more than 10 hours at a time and cover a range of 245 nautical miles.

They have been flying at night over the Gulf of Thailand using Forward Looking Infra-red (FLIR) cameras.

A US P-3C Orion aircraft, normally based in Okinawa, Japan is also on the scene, bringing long-range surveillance capabilities.

Commander William Marks from the US Seventh Fleet said the P-3's search equipment was highly sensitive.

\"Just from the air we can see things as small as almost the size of your hand, or a basketball. So it's not a matter of if we can see it - it's an extremely large area,\" he told the BBC.

\"They [flight recorders] typically have a radio beacon and so for example our P-3 - if they are flying within a certain range of that - will pick up that radio beacon.\"

The P-3 can cover more than 1,500 square miles every hour (about 4,000 square kilometres) and on Monday is scheduled to search over the Malacca Strait to the west of Malaysia.

Other countries
Australia has also sent two P-3C aircraft to join the search for the missing aircraft, which had six Australians and two New Zealanders on board.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the two Royal Australian Air Force maritime surveillance aircraft had been dispatched from the northern city of Darwin.

Singapore has sent two warships, a submarine support and rescue vessel, a Sikorsky naval helicopter and a C-130 aircraft.

The submarine has divers on board who can help search for clues underwater, the Ministry of Defence said.

The Thai Navy has dispatched a Super Lynx helicopter and a patrol ship to the Andaman Sea, west of Thailand.

It has also put two other ships on standby in the Gulf of Thailand, awaiting a request for assistance from Malaysia.

Indonesia has dispatched a corvette, four rapid patrol vessels and a maritime surveillance plane after Malaysia requested assistance to scour the waters around Penang Island in the Malacca Strait.

87098

The Philippines has also dispatched a Fokker F-27 and an Islander plane and two patrol ships.

It has also placed on alert a Hamilton-class cutter vessel and a C-130 plane to join in the mission, if needed.