Oil slick is not from missing flight MH370, says search team
An oil slick sighted during the sea search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 did not come from the plane, officials said yesterday, dashing hopes of finding a definitive answer to the fate of the jet.
"Preliminary analysis of the sample collected by ADV Ocean Shield has confirmed that it is not aircraft engine oil or hydraulic fluid," Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), which is organising the search, said in a statement.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard.
Malaysian investigators believe it was deliberately diverted, though by who is unknown.
Satellite data analysis indicated it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but no debris has been found despite a huge air and sea search.
AFP reported that In the absence of wreckage, some relatives are publicly refusing to accept their loved ones are dead.
JACC said Monday the oil slick sighted in the search area and would be taken to Perth for testing to see if it came from the Boeing 777.
The announcement yesterday was the latest setback in an operation marked by false leads and frustrated hopes.
However, authorities said that up to 10 military aircraft, two civil aircraft and 11 ships would still search an area totalling about 40,000 square km.
That would suggest searchers, under pressure from the families of those on board the plane, still hold some hope of finding floating wreckage.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was quoted by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday as saying that "we believe that (underwater) search will be completed within a week or so. If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider".
Asked by Reuters on Thursday to clarify Abbott's comments to the newspaper, his office said he was only suggesting that authorities may change the area being searched by the Bluefin-21 drone, not that the search would be called off.
Malaysia's Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, vowed that the search would continue even if there could be a pause to regroup and reconsider the best area to scour.
"The search will always continue. It's just a matter of approach," he told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
He said Abbot remained in close contact with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the two had spoken on Thursday to discuss the search.
"They've been looking for 40 days and haven't found anything floating yet," Geoffrey Dell, Associate Professor of Accident Investigation and Forensics at Central Queensland University, told Reuters.
"You'd have to start saying there's either nothing to find or let's move elsewhere," he said. – Agencies, April 18, 2014.
