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| Relatives of Chinese passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cry as they protest outside the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 25, 2014. Furious over Malaysia's handling of the lost jetliner a day after the country said the passengers must be dead, Chinese relatives of the missing marched Tuesday to the Malaysia Embassy, where they threw plastic water bottles, tried to rush the gate and chanted, "Liars!" |
KUALA LUMPUR,
Malaysia (AP) -- As frustration was setting in, calmer seas returned
Wednesday and the search for the remains of Flight 370 began anew in
remote waters of the Indian Ocean off western Australia.
Gale-force
winds that forced an all-day delay Tuesday died down, allowing a total
of 12 planes and two ships from the United States, China, Japan, South
Korea, Australia and New Zealand to resume the hunt for any pieces of
the Malaysia Airlines jet - tangible evidence for the families seeking
closure after more than two weeks of anguished uncertainty.
A
day earlier, angry relatives shouted "Liars!" in the streets of Beijing
about Malaysia's declaration that the plane went down with all aboard.
Although
officials sharply narrowed the search zone based on the last satellite
signals received from the Boeing 777, it was still estimated at 1.6
million square kilometers (622,000 square miles), an area bigger than
Texas and Oklahoma combined.
"We're not
searching for a needle in a haystack - we're still trying to define
where the haystack is," Australia's deputy defense chief, Air Marshal
Mark Binskin, told reporters Tuesday at a military base in the
Australian west coast city of Perth as idle planes stood behind him.
The
Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which coordinates the search on
Malaysia's behalf, said Wednesday's search will focus on 80,000 square
kilometers (30,900 square miles) of ocean. The search area is about
2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.
Malaysia
announced Monday that an analysis of satellite data received after
Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 indicated the plane
had gone down in the Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people aboard.
The
finding did not answer troubling questions about why the plane was so
far off-course, and China, home to 153 of the passengers, demanded that
Malaysia turn over the satellite data used to determine the plane's
fate.
The airline's chairman, Mohammed Nor Mohammed Yusof, said it may take time for further answers to become clear.
"The investigation still underway may yet prove to be even longer and more complex than it has been since March 8th," he said.
The
search for the wreckage and the plane's flight data and cockpit voice
recorders could take years because the ocean can extend to up to 7,000
meters (23,000 feet) deep in some parts. It took two years to find the
black box from an Air France jet that went down in the Atlantic Ocean on
a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, and searchers knew
within days where the crash site was.
There is
a race against the clock to find Flight 370's black boxes, whose
battery-powered "pinger" could stop sending signals within two weeks.
The batteries are designed to last at least a month.
David
Ferreira, an oceanographer at the University of Reading in Britain,
said little is known about the detailed topography of the seabed where
Malaysia Flight 370 is believed to have crashed.
"We
know much more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean
floor in that part of the Indian Ocean," Ferreira said.
Searching for a needle in a haystack would be simple by comparison, he said.
"This
haystack is in the dark, two or three miles underwater, hundreds of
miles from land, and in a field no one has even seen before, let alone
mapped," Ferreira added.
The satellite information does not provide an exact location - only a rough estimate of where the jet went down.
Defense
Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the data is still being analyzed "to
attempt to determine the final position of the aircraft" and that an
international working group of satellite and aircraft performance
experts had been set up.
Monday's announcement
that there were no survivors unleashed sorrow and anger among the
victims' families, who have complained bitterly about a lack of reliable
information from Malaysian officials.
Nearly
100 relatives and their supporters marched Tuesday to the Malaysian
Embassy in Beijing, where they threw plastic water bottles, tried to
rush the gate and chanted, "Liars!"
Many wore
white T-shirts that read "Let's pray for MH370." They held banners and
shouted, "Tell the truth! Return our relatives!"
Police
briefly scuffled with a group of relatives who tried to approach
journalists. The relatives demanded to see the Malaysian ambassador, and
they later met with him.
In a clear statement
of support for the families, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered a
special envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, to Kuala Lumpur to
deal with the case. Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng told
Malaysia's ambassador that China wanted to know exactly what led
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to announce that the plane had been
lost, a statement on the ministry's website said.
The
conclusions were based on an analysis of the brief signals the plane
sent every hour to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat, a British company,
even after other communication systems on the jetliner shut down for
unknown reasons.
Yusof, the airline's chairman, said the conclusion was based on "the evidence given to us, and by rational deduction."
Investigators
will be looking at various possibilities, including mechanical or
electrical failure, hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to
the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.
"We
do not know why. We do not know how. We do not know how the terrible
tragedy happened," Malaysia Airlines' chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari
Yahya, told reporters.
Australian and Chinese
search planes spotted floating objects southwest of Perth on Monday, but
none was retrieved. With the 24-hour delay in the search, those objects
and other possible debris from the plane could drift to an even wider
area.
There are 26 countries involved in the
search, and Hishammudin said the problems are not diplomatic "but
technical and logistical."
"We've got to get
lucky," said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board. "It's a race to get to the area in time to
catch the black box pinger while it's still working."
