DEBRIS washed up on a West Australian beach has been found not to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, in another blow to a frustrating search.
The debris — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — was handed to police and photos sent to air investigators after the discovery yesterday on a beach at Augusta, about 320km south of Perth.
However the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says there is nothing to indicate the item found was wreckage from flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.
“We want to pursue every possible lead that will help us find MH370 but sadly this is one that isn't going to help that search,” ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan told ABC radio.
The incident is just the latest in a series of false leads in the search for the missing Boeing 777, which disappeared with 239 people on board, including six Australians.
Despite numerous sightings of debris, none has proved to be from the missing plane, and searchers are using a minisub to comb the seabed in the search area.
Up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships are today expected to continue to search an area of nearly 50,000 sq km of ocean, about 1500km northwest of Perth.
Tony Abbott says failure to find any clue in the most likely crash site of the lost jet would not spell the end of the search, as officials plan soon to bring in more powerful sonar equipment that can delve deeper beneath the Indian Ocean.
The search coordination centre said yesterday a robotic submarine, the US Navy’s Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 80 per cent of the 310sq km seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor. Nothing of interest had been found.
The 4.5-kilometre deep search area is a circle 20 kilometres wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane’s black boxes. But the batteries powering those signals are now believed dead.
Defence Minister David Johnston said Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the United States on the next phase of the search for the plane. Details on the next phase are likely to be announced next week.
Senator Johnston said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the remote-controlled subs that found RMS Titanic 3,800 metres under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the Australian WWII wreck HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean off the Australian coast, north of the current search area, in 2008.
“The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water,’’ Senayor Johnston said.
While the Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the seabed search area to complete, Senator Johnston estimated that task would take another two weeks.
The Prime Minister said the airliner’s probable impact zone was 700 kilometres long and 80 kilometres wide. A new search strategy would be adopted if nothing is found in the current seabed search zone.
“If at the end of that period we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search, we may well rethink the search, but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery,’’ Mr Abbott told reporters yesterday.
“We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board, we owe it to the hundreds of millions — indeed billions — of people who travel by air to try to get to the bottom of this. The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time,’’ he said.
The debris — which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets — was handed to police and photos sent to air investigators after the discovery yesterday on a beach at Augusta, about 320km south of Perth.
However the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says there is nothing to indicate the item found was wreckage from flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.
“We want to pursue every possible lead that will help us find MH370 but sadly this is one that isn't going to help that search,” ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan told ABC radio.
The incident is just the latest in a series of false leads in the search for the missing Boeing 777, which disappeared with 239 people on board, including six Australians.
Despite numerous sightings of debris, none has proved to be from the missing plane, and searchers are using a minisub to comb the seabed in the search area.
Up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships are today expected to continue to search an area of nearly 50,000 sq km of ocean, about 1500km northwest of Perth.
Tony Abbott says failure to find any clue in the most likely crash site of the lost jet would not spell the end of the search, as officials plan soon to bring in more powerful sonar equipment that can delve deeper beneath the Indian Ocean.
The search coordination centre said yesterday a robotic submarine, the US Navy’s Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 80 per cent of the 310sq km seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor. Nothing of interest had been found.
The 4.5-kilometre deep search area is a circle 20 kilometres wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane’s black boxes. But the batteries powering those signals are now believed dead.
Defence Minister David Johnston said Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the United States on the next phase of the search for the plane. Details on the next phase are likely to be announced next week.
Senator Johnston said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the remote-controlled subs that found RMS Titanic 3,800 metres under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the Australian WWII wreck HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean off the Australian coast, north of the current search area, in 2008.
“The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water,’’ Senayor Johnston said.
While the Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the seabed search area to complete, Senator Johnston estimated that task would take another two weeks.
The Prime Minister said the airliner’s probable impact zone was 700 kilometres long and 80 kilometres wide. A new search strategy would be adopted if nothing is found in the current seabed search zone.
“If at the end of that period we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search, we may well rethink the search, but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery,’’ Mr Abbott told reporters yesterday.
“We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board, we owe it to the hundreds of millions — indeed billions — of people who travel by air to try to get to the bottom of this. The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time,’’ he said.
