CANBERRA // A sprawling undersea search area for a missing Malaysian airliner in the southern Indian Ocean could be extended farther south based on new satellite analysis, just weeks before the multimillion dollar, year-long sonar hunt for wreckage is to begin.
Australia’s deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, said analysis of a failed attempted satellite phone call from Malaysia Airlines to Flight 370 “suggests to us that the aircraft might have turned south a little earlier than we had previously expected”.
The Boeing 777 disappeared off radar after veering off its northerly course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, and is thought to have crashed 1,800 kilometres off Australia’s west coast.
The overall search area remained unchanged, Mr Truss said. However, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said he would meet international experts next week to decide whether the 60,000 square kilometre targeted search area should be extended or shifted farther south based on the new analysis.
“We think we may extend that area farther south; that’s the thing we’re currently considering,” Mr Dolan said.
The new analysis applies to satellite data from the first of two satellite phone calls Malaysia Airlines ground staff attempted to make to Flight 370’s crew.
By the time the calls were attempted, the plane had become invisible to civilian radar. It had flown west without communications past Sumatra and beyond the range of Malaysian military radar.
Mr Dolan said the new analysis suggested the jet was already flying south when the first phone call was attempted less than 20 minutes after the plane dropped off military radar.
“Previously, there was the possibility that it could have been quite a bit later, so we had to do our modelling based on a range of possibilities as to where the aircraft turned,” Mr Dolan said.
“We’re now more confident that it turned comparatively early. That does make a difference to how we prioritise the search along the 7th arc,” he added, referring to the 60,000 square kilometre area where satellite information from a jet engine transmitter suggests the plane ran out of fuel and crashed.
Investigators have long been aware of the phone call. But they have only recently adapted analysis methodology to glean clues to the plane’s direction from the satellite phone data.
The analysis adds weight to an Australian Transport Safety Bureau crash investigation report in June in which most of the modelling of the plane’s potential flight paths factored in a relatively early switch to a southerly course.
Investigators are currently attempting to calculate precisely where they should start their search, and an order of priority for other potential crash sites to be examined within the wider area.
* Associated Press