Sensors Are Dispatched in Search for Missing Jet

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A crucial stage in the four-week-long search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane began on Friday as two military ships - one from Australia and the other from Britain - directed their sensor technology beneath the surface of the water and began the underwater phase of the hunt, hoping to pick up signs of wreckage lying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

The ships would begin searching a single 150-mile-long track of the ocean floor, each starting from an opposite end and converging in the middle, said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the Australian official overseeing the coordination of the search. Both vessels are equipped with listening devices that can hear any pings from the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or black boxes.

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Mr. Houston said that the two ships - the H.M.S. Echo of the Royal Navy and the Ocean Shield of the Royal Australian Navy - were part of a deployment of nine vessels involved in Friday's search, about 1,050 miles off Perth, Australia. The ships will be joined by as many as 10 military planes and four civilian jets, which will conduct surveillance flights over the search zone throughout the day.

Mar. 8, 2014 00:41 AM

A Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines leaves Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing with 227 passengers, of which two-thirds are Chinese, and a Malaysian crew of 12.

Mar. 8, 2014 01:07 AM

The airplane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or Acars, which transmits data about the plane's performance, sends a transmission. It is not due to transmit again for a half-hour.

Mar. 8, 2014 01:19 AM

The cockpit crew acknowledges a message from ground control, saying, 'Good night Malaysian three seven zero.' No further voice messages are received from the plane.

Mar. 8, 2014 01:21 AM

Two minutes after the last voice transmission, the plane's transponder, which signals its identity, altitude and speed to other aircraft and to monitors on the ground, is shut off or fails.

Mar. 8, 2014 01:37 AM

The Acars system fails to send its scheduled signal, indicating that it has been shut off or has failed sometime in the past half-hour.

Mar. 8, 2014 02:15 AM

An unidentified plane flying westward is detected by military radar. It ascends to 45,000 feet, above the approved limit for a Boeing 777, then descends unevenly to 23,000 feet and eventually flies out over the Indian Ocean. Investigators later conclude that it was Flight 370. It was last plotted 200 miles northwest of Panang.

Mar. 8, 2014 06:30 AM

By now Flight 370 was scheduled to have landed in Beijing.

Mar. 8, 2014 07:24 AM

Malaysia Airlines announces that it has lost contact with the aircraft.

Mar. 8, 2014 08:11 AM

The last complete signal is received from an automated satellite system on the plane, suggesting that it was still intact and flying. The Malaysian authorities say the jet had enough fuel to keep flying for perhaps a half-hour after this.

Mar. 8, 2014 08:19 AM

Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, says an incomplete signal representing a 'partial handshake' may have been received. Further analysis of satellite data confirms that the jet went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

Mar. 15, 2014 00:00 AM

The Malaysian authorities say the investigation has become a criminal matter because the jet appears to have been deliberately diverted. The plane's first turn off course, to the west, was executed using an onboard computer, probably programmed by someone with knowledge of aircraft systems. The authorities say two passengers were Iranians who boarded using stolen European passports, but no links to terrorist groups are found.

The Ocean Shield is outfitted with a so-called towed pinger locator, a batwing-shaped device with a microphone that is towed below the vessel and can pick up any signals from Flight 370's black boxes.

A lot of hope is riding on the effectiveness of the underwater listening devices - and on the estimates of the data from analysts that have designated the search zone as the most likely location of the plane's plunge into the ocean.

The black boxes' batteries, which have a life span of about a month, are expected to expire next week. When they die, so will the pinger signal, leaving the boxes to rest mutely on the seabed and making their discovery far more difficult.

In the meantime, crews on the planes and other vessels will continue searching for floating debris from the plane. If debris is found and confirmed, it might help searchers determine the plane's point of entry into the ocean.

Possible

flight paths

(based on different

speeds the plane may

have been traveling)

Planned search

area for April 3

Search areas

March 28-April 2

Locations of objects spotted in aerial and

satellite images over the last two weeks

Possible

flight paths

(based on speeds the plane

may have been traveling)

Planned search

area for April 3

Search areas

March 28-April 2

Locations of objects spotted in aerial and

satellite images over the last two weeks

'We'll continue the surface search for a good deal more time because if we find a piece of wreckage on the surface, or some evidence on the surface that the aircraft went into the water nearby, that gives us a much better datum' to conduct the underwater search, Mr. Houston said during a news conference in Perth.

'Instead of searching over an area the size of Ireland, we might be able to get into an area which is the size of the metropolitan area of Perth, for example,' he said.

Mr. Houston said there was still 'a great possibility' that searchers might still find debris from the plane floating on the ocean surface.

On Thursday, the search zone was adjusted farther northward from the area where searchers had been exploring for the last week.

The modification, Mr. Houston said Friday, was 'based on continuing groundbreaking and multidisciplinary technical analysis' of satellite data and airplane performance.

'There is nothing unusual about this,' he added. 'The search area will be adjusted on a semiregular basis.'

Video: Malaysia Police Chief on Investigation



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