Sub dives deeper in hunt for missing MH370

PERTH: The mini-sub searching for missing flight MH370 dived on its fifth seabed mission Friday, officials said, testing the vehicle's recommended depth limits after failing to find any wreckage.
With no results to show since the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared on March 8, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has set a one-week deadline to locate the plane which is believed to have crashed in a remote area of the Indian Ocean west of Perth.
Searchers are pushing the hunt beyond the normal 4,500 metre (15,000 feet) depth range of the US Navy's Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), the Perth-based Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.
But nothing has been sighted on the seabed so far.
"Overnight Bluefin-21 AUV completed another mission in the underwater search area and has commenced mission five," JACC said in a statement.
"Data analysis from the fourth mission did not provide any contacts of interest."
The unmanned Bluefin-21 which maps the seafloor by sonar, has searched 110 square kilometres (43 square miles) to date, JACC said.
The statement gave no further details about the seabed search which began Monday with an aborted mission and had technical problems on Tuesday.
The UAV, which re-surfaced after hitting a pre-programmed maximum depth of 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles), would now be sent deeper after the manufacturer advised this was an "acceptable" risk, JACC said late Thursday.
"This expansion of the operating parameters allows the Bluefin-21 to search the sea floor within the predicted limits of the current search area," it said without detailing how deep the device would be deployed.
The Malaysia Airlines jet is believed to have crashed in the ocean after mysteriously vanishing while en route between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.
Hopes of finding the plane have focused on the Bluefin-21 after signals believed to be emanating from the plane's flight data recorders on the seabed fell silent in recent days before their source could be pinpointed exactly.
The submersible is being deployed from an Australian vessel to scan an uncharted seafloor at extreme depths, but the effort has started slowly and Abbott said the Bluefin-21 would be given about one week.
"We believe that the search will be completed within a week or so," Abbott told the Wall Street Journal.
"If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider."
Both Abbott and acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein vowed Thursday not to give up looking for the plane. – AFP

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