Dutch company Fugro Survey was awarded an additional contract by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) to continue the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) on the 60,000 square kilometers seabed of the southern Indian Ocean.
The Government of Australia allocated AUS $60 million to ATSB, to conduct the said search. The costs for the seach will be shared by other countries like Malaysia, according to Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss.
'We now intend to search it thoroughly and hopefully we will find the aircraft or a debris field or traces of where the aircraft has entered into the water so that we can provide closure to the families involved and information to support the investigation so that the world will know what happened that led to the fate of this particular aircraft,” Truss said to reporters gathered in Canberra.
Fugro will deploy two of its specialist vessels, the Fugro Discovery and the Fugro Equator, to carry out the deep-water search operations for the said plane. The vessels are equipped with underwater cameras and sonar scanners that will help scour the surface of the ocean.
Both the ATSB and Fugro expect Fugro Discovery to start its deep-two search late September. Joining shortly afterward is Fugro Equator, which has been part of the bathymetric survey of the search zone since June.
The bathymetric survey, according to ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan, is critical step prior to starting an underwater search, showing underwater volcanoes, valleys and canyons that would make it hard to spot the debris.
“The search is expected to take up to twelve months but will understandably end if the missing aircraft is found beforehand,” Fugro said in a statement.
Of the 60,000 square kilometers search area, a little over half of it was already mapped, based on other reports. The search zone is said to be 700 kilometers long and 80 kilometers wide.
Based on the preliminary analysis of satellite communication messages and radar data, MH370 was assumed to have crashed on the southern Indian Ocean, which is 2,500 kilometers southwest of Perth, Australia.
But no plane debris has been found yet on said possible crash zone despite the international search effort spearheaded by the Australian government and controlled by the Pearce Air Force base in Perth.
As of the moment, Chinese vessel Zhu Kezhen continues to survey the southern Indian Ocean’s seabed till middle of September, before Fugro steps in, said research.
The Malaysian government will send four vessels and a naval survey ship to support the search. The ship, in particular, will come late August.
The MH370 was on a routine flight on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 239 passengers and crews on board. Contact was lost since then with the air traffic control, leaving no emergency warnings at all, as the plane transitioned between Malaysia and Vietnam airspace.
Australian authorities believe someone could have deliberately turned on the autopilot system of the cockpit, thereafter putting the flight toward the southern Indian Ocean.
The search for the missing MH370 is considered the longest in the history of modern aviation.
Fugro, meanwhile, provides several services worldwide in Geoscience, Geotechnical, Subsea Services and Survey divisions.
