On Thursday, after Australian officials sent planes over one of the most remote places on earth searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and came back empty-handed, they offered a new theory about the mysterious disappearance.
The wreckage from the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people may have sunk already. The aircraft went missing nearly two weeks ago.
“Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating,” Australian deputy prime minister Warren Truss told reporters in Perth. “It may have slipped to the bottom.”
The search will continue. Australian, New Zealand and US aircrafts will be joined by Chinese and Japanese planes over the weekend. India also said it was sending two aircrafts, a Poseidon P-8I maritime surveillance aircraft and a C-130 Hercules transporter, to join the hunt in the southern Indian Ocean. In addition, they are sending another P-8I and four warships to search in the Andaman Sea, where the plane was last seen on military radar on March 8.
“It’s about the most inaccessible spot that you can imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Papua New Guinea, where he is on a visit.
“Now it could just be a container that’s fallen off a ship. We just don’t know, but we owe it to the families, and the friends and the loved ones to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle.”
Investigators are still trying to determine what happened to the flight, but evidence shows the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of miles from its scheduled path. While they have not ruled out technical problems, authorities are focusing on the possibility of a hijacking or sabotage.
We’ll keep you updated with the latest.
SOURCE: The Star | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
