Missing Malaysian jet can be found, even in deep ocean

With the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in its second week, there are fears that any wreckage may be too deep to find if it has crashed in the Indian Ocean.

But if it’s there search teams will find it, says David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. In 2011, he used three robot submarines to find Air France flight 447 beneath the Atlantic, 4 kilometres down.

“No depth is beyond our reach,” he told New Scientist. “Without doubt, if the aircraft is in the oceans, given time we can, and will, find it – even in the deepest and most rugged terrain.”

But first the searchers have to know where to look (see map below). Signals pinged from the jet to a geostationary satellite have led to air and sea searches along two vast corridors: north-west from Malaysia towards Kazakhstan, and south-west out over the Indian Ocean, which has an average depth of 3900 metres but with trenches twice that deep in places.

No radar ruse

No country on the northerly track has yet reported any civilian or military radar contact with the Boeing 777 after it lost contact, nor has there been anysightings of wreckage on land. However residents of the island of Kuda Huvadhoo in the Maldives have reported seeing a low-flying jet on the morning that flight MH370 went missing, according to a local news website.

One Malaysian newspaper claimed there has been no radar contact because the aircraft had dropped to an altitude of 1500 metres to evade radar. But that altitude is not low enough for this to work – as pointed out by aviation website Flightglobal.

In the southern Indian Ocean the Australian Maritime Safety Authority is flying search missions 3000 kilometres west of Perth, West Australia. It is using satellite intelligence from the US National Transportation Safety Board, which has examined the data from the London-based global satellite operator Inmarsat and estimated where the aircraft may have come down after its 7 hours 31 minutes in the air.

It is also possible the NTSB may have images of the missing airliner from spy satellites run by the US National Reconnaissance Office – run jointly by the National Security Agency and the Pentagon. “We don’t ever discuss our operations or assets up there in space for security reasons. But the Department of Defense is working in support of US Pacific Command efforts to find the missing aircraft,” says an NRO spokesperson.

If the plane came down in the sea, the potential depths at which wreckage may lie, in much deeper waters than the previous search in the South China Sea, has led to scepticism that the plane will ever be found.

But despite claims from investigators that the aircraft was most likely deliberately steered off course by persons unknown after disabling its radar transponder and ACARS technical datalink, informed observers still see accidents – such as catastrophic depressurisation or an extended fire that released toxic fumes – as more plausible causes of the jet’s bizarre unplanned journey.