BALTIMORE, Maryland April 9, 2014 - There was fear among those searching for a missing Malaysian Airlines Jumbo Jet carrying 239 people that they had heard the last of the under-water pings two search ships had heard. The pings were picked up last weekend by a Chinese ship and an Australian Ship with American Equipment on board that is said to be the most up-to-date available for these types of things. Then they stopped for three really long days. Last night they were detected again. The search leaders are triangulating each detected ping, enabling them to place boundaries on the part of the ocean floor where the jet might be found. The more pings they hear, the smaller they are able to make the area the plane could be found at. When the pings stop, or when they are abundant enough to finally allow the searchers to place the jet at a certain place on the ocean floor, the searchers will deploy a remote controlled unmanned submarine to attempt to visualize the wreck and, eventually, recover the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders.
Update at 3:45 pm The signals have again be heard. They are weaker. They were detected for seven minutes.
This writer has relied more and more on the knowledgable blogging of the respected aviation expert Ben Sandilands, for not only the raw facts of the search, but an explanation of what they mean. The blog, which he calls "Plane Talking," is carried by the Crikey Media Group on their web site, which is based in Australia. The specific site for the Sandilands blog is http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/. Although he concentrates on aviation topics and the airlines industry, it is interesting material even when the world isn't following his every word. This is what Mr. Sandilands says about the latest information. He keeps completely in contact with the search coordinator, Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, "who is heading the Joint Agency Coordination Centre in Perth, [and] said “It shouldn’t be too long now before we send down the autonomous submersible to seek verification images of parts of the wreckage … I think we are searching in the right area.
"However he cautioned that “We need to see the wreckage….We need to have the most precise starting point possible before we send (it) down.”
Mr. Sandilands said that more and more the search team will have to confront the tremendous amount of silt that is on the bottom of the ocean in this area. Not only does this silt have the ability to completely obscure objects that fall into it, even large objects, but it can stifle or severely distort audio signals.
The RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) will begin dropping marking buoys equipped with hydrophones into the defined area of the search. Up to 84 buoys may be deployed, Mr. Sandilands noted. Each of the buoys can drop a hydrophone some 300 meter into the sea.
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