Search for MH370 scaled back
PERTH (AFP) — The intensive aerial search for surface wreckage from Flight MH370 officially ended yesterday as the hunt was drastically scaled back, with ships also moving out of the remote Indian Ocean area where the plane is believed to have gone down.
Australian authorities said the focus would move “over the coming weeks” to an intensified undersea search in the quest to find out what happened to the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people aboard.
Eight nations have been involved in the unprecedented Indian Ocean hunt — Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Britain and China — with more than 300 sorties flown across a vast expanse of water in the search for debris.
But with nothing to show for their efforts to scan more than 4.5 million square kilometers from the air since March 18, the planes have been stood down.
“Most of the aircraft will have left by the end of today,” a spokesman for the Australian-led Joint Agency Coordination Center told AFP, although an Australian P-3 Orion would remain on standby in Perth.
The US, Japan, New Zealand and Malaysia all confirmed that their aircraft were returning to base. There was no immediate word from China, which accounted for most of the passengers on board.
As many as 14 ships from Australia, China and Britain were involved in scanning the ocean surface for debris or black box signals but many of these are also pulling out.
“Some need to head back to port and refuel and give the crew a rest, others will go back to doing what they were doing for their respective nations before they joined the search,” the spokesman said.