Malaysia Airlines: Flight MH370 Families Should Go Back Home, Search Could Take Months

Family members of Flight MH370 passengers have reportedly been told to wait for news of their loved ones fate “from the comfort of their own homes,” as the search could take months.

Since the ill-fated Boeing 777 disappeared from radar over the South China Sea on March 8, the relatives of the 239 passengers and crew of Fight MH370 have been put up in hotels, first in Kuala Lumpur, then in Australia, to follow the latest developments in the search for the Malaysia Airlines missing plane.

The families of Flight MH370 have been briefed on a regular basis as to the status of their missing relatives, but now Malaysia Airlines is advising they should return home.

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said that the search for Flight MH370 has entered “a new phase” during which a much larger area of the Indian Ocean floor will be combed, after the original area turned up nothing.

In statements published by The Telegraph, Abbott said:

“It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk.”

Investigators were hopeful that they were detecting what they believed were “pings” from the plane’s black boxes, even though they were not positively identified as such. The “pings” suddenly stopped around the time when the batteries were expected to die, about 30 days after the disappearance of Flight MH370.

The signals, plus data obtained from analysis of the ACARS system transmissions — which was turned off, but was designed to continue to communicate with satellites — led authorities coordinating the search to conclude that Flight MH370 met its fate in the Southern Indian Ocean.

From the beginning of the ordeal, the multi-national search effort has been a case of trial and error, as the information has been trickling out slowly and not one piece of evidence has been found to date. The latest information is that some debris may have been found thousands of miles away from the search area in the Bay of Bengal. Investigators are discounting the reports.

In other developments, the Independent says Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein announced the government is ready to issue a report about the disappearance of Flight MH370 that could come out on Thursday.

For the families, it has been a roller-coaster of tragic news and hopeful developments as they desperately wait for any news about what happened to Flight MH370 when it was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China almost two-months ago.

[Image via Twitter]