[Peetwo]

Update 15/01/18: The hunt is back on..

Via the Oz:

MH370 search ready for launch

12:00amEAN HIGGINS, AMANDA HODGE

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is back on and due to start next week.

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The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is back on and due to start next week, with the head of the underwater survey company conducting it saying it has “a realistic prospect of finding it”.

Ocean Infinity chief executive Oliver Plunkett said the ship Seabed Constructor was expected to be in the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean next Wednesday.

“It will launch almost ­instantly,” Mr Plunkett said, referring to the eight autonomous underwater vehicles, or torpedo-like unmanned mini-submarines with side-scan sonar that Ocean Infinity will simultaneously use to try to find wreckage of the Boeing 777 at great depths.

On the way from its last port of call in Durban, South Africa, Mr Plunkett said the crew and scientists had conducted some trial dives of the AUVs.

“We have had some pretty good results, as far as I can tell, a dive down to 5800m, which is pretty cool,’’ he said.

Mr Plunkett said the search would first concentrate on areas identified by Australian authorities and scientists as the most likely based on their “ghost flight” and “death dive” theory that the plane’s pilots were incapacitated and the plane crashed after fuel exhaustion.

But if it is not found there, Mr Plunkett said, it was possible to divert the Seabed Constructor to another target zone preferred by international airline captains Byron Bailey and Simon Hardy, who believe a rogue pilot ­hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end, ditching it.

“I think assuming all of the aviation analysis is right, then I think we have a realistic prospect of finding it,” Mr Plunkett said.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, mainly Chinese nationals.

A two-year, $200 million search led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau at the request of Malaysia failed to find a trace of the plane in a 120,000sq km search zone, and that survey ended a year ago.

Ocean Infinity, a Houston- based ocean survey outfit owned by several British investors, made an offer to the Malaysian government late last year that it would launch a new search on a “no find, no fee” basis.

& from NZ'ed's Stuff:

MH370 Kiwi's widow wants Boeing to pay for retrieval ahead of new search for missing airliner

OLIVER LEWIS

Last updated 20:34, January 14 2018



SUPPLIED

Paul and Danica Weeks on their wedding day. The couple lived in Christchurch until they moved to Perth in 2011.

As the search for missing airliner MH370 enters a new phase, the widow of a Kiwi passenger wants plane manufacturer Boeing to help pick up the retrieval bill should it be found.

Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul Weeks was on the plane when it vanished during a 2014 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is suing the American aerospace company as she believes the Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing 777 disappeared along with its 229 passengers and crew due to mechanical fault.

Weeks, who has also filed proceedings against the airline, said Boeing needed to prove its aircraft were safe and helping to pay for MH370's recovery – if it was found – would help to do that.

CELESTE GORRELL ANSTISS

Danica Weeks, the widow of MH370 passenger Paul Weeks, with the couple's two children, Lincoln, now aged 7, left, and Jack, now 4.

"If they've got nothing to hide then, why not? They've got the money, they've got the resources," the Sunshine Coast, Australia woman said on Sunday. 

"So let's hear from them, let's hear from the horse's mouth that those planes are safe, because quite frankly their silence has been pretty scary.

REUTERS

Squadron leader Brett McKenzie marks the name of another search aircraft on the windshield of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for missing MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014.

"I'm not suing for money. The beauty of aviation law is they have to prove they weren't negligent, not the other way round."

Another aeroplane manufacturer, Airbus, helped fund part of the search for Air France Flight 447 after one of its 330s crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing 228 people.

The search for what remains of missing airliner MH370 resumes this week after the Malaysian Government signed a memorandum of understanding with American seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity to find it within three months.

A ship chartered by the company, the Seabed Constructor, was expected to reach and begin searching the 25,000 square kilometre area in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, following earlier extensive searches.

Weeks said court action was her only way to get one of the largest aerospace companies in the world to talk.

"We're so sick of not hearing anything from them, it's really a slap in the face.The people that manufactured this plane should be helping us find out what happened to it."

FINDING HUSBAND 'STILL THE END GOAL'

Weeks' husband and the father of her two children was from Christchurch. The young family lived in the city before moving to Perth in 2011.

"I just want to find him. That was the start goal and that's still the end goal – to find Paulie," she said.

"I know it's been four years and the boys have grown so much, but it feels just like yesterday for me.

"Since day one we're no further ahead. They say time heals, but time doesn't heal in this. We still don't know."

Weeks said their eldest son, Lincoln – who was born in Christchurch on the day of the September 2010 earthquake – remembered his father and would tell stories about him to his brother Jack, 4.

"I don't know if anyone has been able to start grieving yet, because it's so surreal and so unprecedented – as Malaysian Airlines likes to say – that we just have to handle it day by day."

Weeks had yet to hold a memorial or funeral service for her husband and said it was too soon to do so until she knew what had happened to the engineer.

Sara Weeks, Paul Weeks' sister, said every year around the anniversary of the MH370's March 8 disappearance she and other family members and friends gathered in Christchurch to "share a couple of drinks for Paul".

Weeks said she supported her sister-in-law's court action: "If it helps her through her journey through this awful situation that's fantastic and if it leads to some answers that would be great, too".

She said "hope" was the wrong word to describe the latest efforts to find the plane. However, she said the search – payment for which was dependent on a result – was a good thing, as it would help provide closure.

"I can't mourn, I can't move on until I know what happened to my brother. There's just nothing you can do. We need to have some clear, hard facts – 'This is what happened to the plane', 'This is where it is' – so we can process it," she said.

Boeing has been approached for comment.
 - Stuff

MTF...P2