MH370 searchers spot shipwreck instead of airliner

Another old shipwreck has been located by searchers for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The plane that went missing in 2014 has so far eluded an international Australian-led team scanning the Indian Ocean.

Deutsche Welle, 14 January 2016

Australia's search coordination agency announced Wednesday that a submersible vehicle deployed by a search ship spotted the remains of an old metallic ship lying on the seabed on December19, at a depth of 3,700 meters (12,140 feet).

"The Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Museum have conducted a preliminary review of the some sonar imagery and advised that the vessel is likely to be a steel/iron vessel dating from the turn of the 19th century," said the Joint Agency Coordinating Centre (JACC).

A previous sonar find in May last year showed an anchor, along with other objects thought to be lumps of coal.

More than half scanned

So far, the expensive oceanic search for MH370 has covered more than 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles) of mostly deep seafloor. The total area planned is 120,000 square kilometers.

JACC said that governments involved had agreed not to widen the intended area unless "credible new information" emerged.

The only tangible evidence that MH370 met a tragic end emerged last May, when a two-meter-long piece of the wing, a so-called flaperon, washed up on Reunion, an Indian Ocean island.

The airliner with 239 people on board went missing during an intended flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Speculation

A myriad of speculative causes for the plane's disappearance has ranged from a hijacking, to mechanical failure, a terror plot to even rogue pilot action.

Analysts have said that only by pinpointing a crash site and recovering the plane's flight recorders will authorities being able to say exactly what happened to the plane.

ipj/sms (Reuters, AFP)