MH370 debris ‘likely to reach Indonesian shores’

PETALING JAYA: Wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is most likely to wash up on the coast of Indonesia, not Australia where the search for the missing jet is being coordinated, authorities have said.
Officials leading the search said they are still receiving regular reports from members of the public in Australia about potential wreckage, seven and a half months after the Boeing 777 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, the British newspaper The Independent reported.
But while each of those reports is "reviewed carefully", the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said it is much more likely that any wreckage would have drifted the other way.
Australia has asked Indonesian officials to make public the possibility of evidence from the MH370 disaster appearing on its shoreline.
In a situation report on the search released today, ATSB said it "continues to receive messages from members of the public who have found material washed up on the Australian coastline and think it may be wreckage or debris from MH370".
"ATSB reviews all of this correspondence carefully," it said, "but drift modelling undertaken by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has suggested that if there were any floating debris, it is far more likely to have travelled west, away from the coastline of Australia.
"It is possible that some materials may have drifted to the coastline of Indonesia, and an alert has been issued in that country, requesting that the authorities be alerted to any possible debris from the aircraft."
Meanwhile, officials announced that a second ship is preparing to join the operation in the search zone identified using satellite data about 1,100 miles (1,800km) west of Australia.