Najib, Abbott visit search base for missing plane

 

AP A woman, one of the relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 sits alone after attending a briefing by Malaysian officials at a hotel in Beijing.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak joined his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott Thursday in an inspection of the air force base in Perth that is serving as the centre of a huge international operation to find missing flight MH370.

Welcoming Najib to Pearce Air Force base north of Perth, the search coordinator, former Air Force chief Angus Houston, said the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines airliner was “one of the most complex operations the world has ever seen.” Najib received a personal briefing on the operation under way in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed.

Houston added that families of the 239 people on board the lost flight MH370 were welcome to visit the search headquarters in Perth.

The focus shifted Thursday to the north of Wednesday’s search zone, and aimed to cover 223,000 square kilometres, 1,680 kilometres west of Perth.

Eight planes and nine ships are involved, with a British nuclear submarine HMS Tireless joining the search along with UK search vessel HMS Echo.

Seeking to dampen expectations the search will be successful before the plane’s black box battery runs out in less than a week, Houston said it takes a long time to find ships and planes at the bottom of the ocean.

He noted it took 60 years to find the huge cruiser HMAS Sydney sunk in World War Two, even after witnesses saw the ship exploding over the horizon.

Malaysian police on Wednesday ruled out any of the passengers as suspects in the disappearance of flight MH370 on March 8, but said the investigation into the cabin crew, in particular the pilots, was ongoing.

Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the mystery of what happened on MH370 may never be solved.