Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Faces Possible Delay of Up to Six Weeks: Negotiations With Civilian Contractors Could Lead to Pause in Hunt

The Wall Street Journal
By Daniel Stacey
Updated May 2, 2014 6:41 a.m. ET

SYDNEY—The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 might be delayed up to six weeks by negotiations with civilian contractors that have equipment that can scan deep trenches in the southern Indian Ocean, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Meanwhile, that leaves a lone U.S. Navy submersible to scour the seabed off Australia's west coast where investigators believe the Beijing-bound plane crashed after disappearing from radar on March 8.

The Bluefin-21 submersible drone has been operating at depths of about 4,950 meters-10% beyond its normal limit, according to Australia's defense minister. Its first undersea mission was aborted after just a few hours when it breached its normal depth limit of 4,500 meters, while other sorties have been affected by technical problems.

On Friday evening, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said the 18th subsurface search mission had been completed, adding that the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield is heading to Fleet Base West to replenish supplies and personnel. After its visit to port is complete, the vessel will return to its current search area and restart its search efforts with the Bluefin drone.

One person familiar with the search said agreeing on deals with outside contractors would take up to six weeks, after which they would have to transport any new equipment to the search zone. That time frame is likely to make an already-difficult search even tougher as search crews run up against onset of the southern hemisphere winter.

The person said it hadn't yet been decided whether a single company or a range of companies under a subcontractor, would be needed to search a 23,000-square-mile (60,000 square kilometer) area—about the size of the U.S. state of West Virginia. Officials on Friday predicted the search may take up to 12 months.

So far a number of contractors have been considered across the marine salvage, oil and gas, and nonprofit research sectors, said Australian Defense Minister David Johnston, whose country is leading the search operation.

They include two U.S. companies—Williamson & Associates Inc. and Oceaneering International Inc., the minister said. Williamson helped find an Australian warship, HMAS Sydney, in 2008--more than 60 years after it sank to the bottom of the Indian Ocean in World War II following a clash with a German raider.

Art Wright, an operations manager at Williamson in Seattle who was in charge of sonar in the search for the Australian warship, said the expanded search for Flight 370 would likely require switching to lower resolution scans using deep water towed sonar devices. These devices can survey the sea floor more quickly by firing out sonar across a 5,000 meter wide strip, while devices such as the Bluefin typically cover only 400 meter-to-800 meter widths. This would allow search crews to cover 150 square nautical miles a day with a single device, rather than the around 15 square nautical miles so far covered a day using the Bluefin, he said.

Oceaneering International couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Private contractors would likely want to reanalyze a series of acoustic signals—thought to have come from the jet's "black-box" flight recorders—detected by the vessel Ocean Shield in early April, Mr. Wright said. They might also look at recent acoustic test sheets for the two black-box locator beacons, to determine the frequency of pings at which the devices had most recently been operating.

Civilian experts would want to examine the survey work and mission paths taken by the Bluefin to assess whether it may have missed something in its current search area, he said. A search using a submersible sonar device towed behind a boat would likely cost between US$70,000-US$80,000 a day for each ship used, including crew, equipment, fuel and vessel charter fees, according to Mr. Wright.

Offshore survey experts from the oil-and-gas industry including Dutch company Fugro NV might also take part in the expanded search, the person familiar with the situation said. Mr. Wright said research institutes that might tender for the operation include the University of Southampton in the U.K, Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and the University of Hawaii.

Contractors would be asked to devise their own plans for how to carry out future searches based on the "leads and evidence" acquired by authorities to date, Australia's defense minister said. Payment of those contractors was still being worked out as part of a memorandum of understanding being negotiated between Malaysia and Australia, he added.

 Source:    http://online.wsj.com