Flight MH370 Search May Take Years, US Official Says As Malaysia Prepares To Release Report

The disappearance of Flight MH370 is one of the greatest aviation mysteries and the search for answers may take years, a US official told Reuters on Friday, as the Malaysian government gets ready to issue a report on the missing airliner.

So far there has not been one piece of physical evidence found from the wreckage of Flight MH370 during the frustrating almost-two-month long search.

After initial excitement over ping signals being detected by crews looking for the missing Boeing 777 — believed to be from the black boxes — investigators were back at square one, when the pings suddenly stopped and though the search area was narrowed to a much smaller area that the original was, nothing concrete has come up yet.

Flight MH370 simply vanished into thin air on March 8, while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China.

It was later determined — thanks to data analysis sent by the ACARS system on board — that Flight MH370 took a different course than Beijing, for unknown reasons and the transponder was turned off by someone in the cockpit to avoid radar detection.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the unmanned drone — the Bluefin-21 — search of the Indian Ocean floor came up empty.

Additionally, the official says the search for Flight MH370 will now enter a more difficult phase as crews comb broader areas of the waters off of Perth, Australia, where authorities believe the missing plane went down.

“We went all in on this small area and didn’t find anything. Now you’ve got to go back to the big area,” the official said. “And now you’re talking years.”

Friday marks the end of the Bluefin-21 mission searching for Flight MH370 wreckage at almost three-miles depth and covering an area of 6.2 square miles.

At this point the Malaysian government — which is in charge of the search operations — will need to evaluate how to proceed further and decide whether they want to bring in additional equipment to help in the effort.

Meanwhile, anger from families of the 239 passengers on board Flight Mh370 prompted Malaysia’s Prime Minister to say that his country is ready to release a preliminary report on missing plane.

Najib Razak told CNN in an exclusive interview that the government is ready to publish a report next week:

“I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report.”

For Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood was one of the few Americans on the plane, the Prime Minister’s words are not comforting and she accused him of “reading from a script sheet that some qualified, professional PR person has put together for him.”

Bajc says the families of the 239 passengers missing on board Flight MH370 are fed up with the lack of information from Malaysian authorities and have reached their breaking point more than a month after the plane went missing.

“The briefings are a joke…. The patience level of the families group is just gone.” a frustrated Bajc said on Friday.

Bajc also said that the families of Flight MH370 passengers will press Boeing for answers, as they have received very little information from Malaysian authorities.

“Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United States, and that puts them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary responsibility,” she said.

In a statement to CNN, Boeing expressed its deepest sympathies to the families of those on board Flight MH370, “Boeing continues to serve as a technical adviser to the US National Transportation Safety Board, and in that role we have been an active and engaged party to the investigation.”

[Image via Bing]