The GO Phoenix search vessel arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean and started its

The GO Phoenix search vessel arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean and started its search Monday morning (Sunday evening ET), the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) said. It marks the beginning of a potentially year-long last minute airline travel search operation, spearheaded last minute airline travel by Australian authorities.
The search was then widened last minute airline travel and then shifted last minute airline travel location as it was determined, last minute airline travel through careful analysis of aircraft performance, cross-referenced with data from the Immarsat handshakes, that the plane diverted south. Since then resources have been focused on a swathe of the Indian Ocean, around 2000 km (1242 miles) off the west coast of Australia, the so-called seventh arc.
Continued last minute airline travel analysis of the satellite data, along with a better understanding of the communication between aircraft and satellite and of aircraft performance limits has enabled investigators to further last minute airline travel refine last minute airline travel the search areas.
Although search teams have been focusing along the seventh last minute airline travel arc or partial handshake, where investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel, for months, it s only within the past several weeks that investigators have shifted their focus further south. It is in this area that GO Phoenix last minute airline travel has begun its underwater search.
After seven weeks of intense but fruitless last minute airline travel searching, the international air effort to find the plane ended in late April, shifting the focus to an underwater search. Hopes were raised in May as radio beacon signals pings were thought to have been detected, but the area where the pings were thought to originate from was discounted in May.
Since the active search was postponed, the Australian government has been creating an accurate survey of the sea floor in the search area. One ship, from Dutch surveying company Fugro, continues last minute airline travel to map the underwater topography. To date, over 111,000 square kilometers of the wide search area have been analyzed and mapped by the Australian government and its contractors.
The existing data for the sea floor in that area is at a very low resolution, says Stuart Minchin, head of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia, the agency overseeing the mapping process. Getting an accurate picture is crucial as the drones that will be conducting the underwater sonar search in the upcoming phase will need to be guided with precision to avoid damage.
In the second phase of the search, which involves last minute airline travel towing devices close to the sea bed to get a very fine resolution picture of what s down there it s important to have that level of detail so we don t run into objects, he said.
It has been an involved, long and difficult process back in March, Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, said We re not searching for a needle in a haystack, we re still trying to define where the haystack is.
Authorities are confident that they have accurately last minute airline travel identified the correct search areas now. Martin Dolan, Chief Commissioner and CEO of the ATSB, the agency leading the search, told CNN s David Molko that, should last minute airline travel satellite analysis have led his team to the right spot, the current technology would locate aircraft wreckage.
last minute airline travel What we d say is we ve probably limited it to a small number of haystacks, and we have very good techniques for detecting needles in those haystacks, he said. We have high confidence that if we ve got the right haystack, we ll find the needle in it.
The recently acquired (underwater survey) data has revealed many of these seabed features last minute airline travel for the first time, the statement read. The survey also reveals finer features that were not visible in previous, last minute airline travel low-resolution survey data.
The Australian government said in August that it has picked Fugro Survey, a Dutch company for the mapping and the next phase of undersea search, along with a vessel, the GO Phoenix, supplied by the Malaysian government.
The latter arrived at its assigned last minute airline travel search zone late Sunday and deployed towed sonar to begin the search on Monday. It will conduct search activity for 12 days before going to Fremantle, in western Australia, for resupply.
What we know is that the aircraft will be found close to the arc, the final attempt at communication between the aircraft systems and ground stations. We ve done progressively more refined and detailed analysis of the other satellite information that has enabled us to prioritise (search areas) along that arc.
We have a high probability that the aircraft will be found at the southern end of that long arc. We now know in considerable detail what almost all of the search area looks like, we ve mapped these in detail. We can tow our sonar equipment last minute airline travel about 100 meters (329 ft) from the ocean floor in confidence that we won t run into any unexpected obstacles.
Dolan says that it largely depends on where, and how, the plane is found. The Australian contingent, he says, is still discussing plans with their Malaysian colleagues on how to proceed in the event of a positive last minute airline travel identification of plane wreckage.
If you have a debris field identified, to be able to know what to do with it requires careful mapping and photographing, which will take up to a month, he says. Until we ve got that largely completed we won t understand the sequence of what we re able to do in relation to wreckage and human remains.
There is AUS $60 million ($52.8 mil) earmarked by the Australian government for mapping and underwater search, and Australian expenditure is to be matched by Malaysian government. It is a significant resource upon which to draw, Dolan says.
However, if at the end of that we haven t found the aircraft, then it s really going to be a matter for governments to decide what s next what resources they might wish to supply and I can t really preempt what that discussion might be.