Search for jet intensifies as odds grow longer

Kuala Lumpur: Australia and Malaysia led an intensified multinational search on Monday for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean and prepared to deploy an underwater device to detect any pings from the aircraft's flight data recorders, or black boxes, only days before their batteries are expected to die.

But as searchers contended with a revised search area the size of Poland, there was no immediate indication that they were any closer to finding traces of the aircraft or its 239 passengers and crew members. The plane has been missing for more than three weeks.

Although frustrations and costs have grown, Malaysian and Australian officials asserted they would keep searching indefinitely.

Malaysia has been under increasing pressure, particularly from relatives of Chinese passengers on the March 8 Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight, to produce evidence of the plane's fate. Most of the passengers were Chinese.

"We understand that it has been a difficult time for all the families and we appreciate that many families want to see physical evidence before they will accept that MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean," Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister, said at a news conference here, using the flight's call sign.

"We will continue with all our efforts to find MH370," he said. "This is a promise that Malaysia intends to keep."

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia, whose country has been coordinating the search in the Indian Ocean, said he was not considering ending Australian participation.

"We can keep searching for quite some time to come," he said.

Ten planes and 11 ships scoured the latest search area Monday, about 1,100 miles west of Perth, Australia. The Australian defense minister, David Johnston, said about 100 air personnel and 1,000 sailors were in the zone.

On Tuesday, 10 planes and nine ships were scheduled to participate in the search, officials said, although the weather and the visibility were expected to be poor.

Additional ships were en route, expected to arrive within days, including an Australian naval vessel, the Ocean Shield, equipped to detect the pings of the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

Capt. Mark Matthews, a supervisor of a team from the U.S. Navy that is involved in the search, said the effectiveness of the detection equipment would depend on "how effective we  are at reducing that search area."

Matthews said the so-called pinger locator, towed behind the ship, was a batwing-shaped device with a microphone that could pick up signals from Flight 370's data recorders.

In addition, the ship is also carrying an unmanned underwater vehicle that can be deployed to map a debris field on the ocean floor using sonar, and then to use a camera to provide what Matthews called "a full mosaic" of the debris field.

But the ping detector's utility, in the absence of more specific information about the location of the wreckage, is doubtful. The device will be towed at an average speed of about 3 mph, Matthews said, and the submersible moves at about 3 1/2 mph.

"Nothing is fast in underwater search," Matthews added.

Searchers say there is no time to waste: The pinger locator will be ineffective once the batteries powering the flight data recorders die, which is expected to happen next week.

Hishammuddin said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak would travel to Pearce Air Force Base in Australia on Wednesday to thank the multinational force participating in the search and to view the efforts.

Since Friday, when the search zone was shifted from an area about 700 miles south, aircraft have made daily sightings of floating objects. On closer inspection, none of the items have been linked to the missing plane, a Boeing 777-200.

Two planes flying over the zone Sunday spotted what Hishammuddin called "potential objects." A ship in the area was sent to the spot Monday to retrieve them, he said.

As a measure of how difficult it has been for spotters on the planes to classify objects in the ocean, crews on two ships pulled several objects from the rough waters Saturday, raising hopes that the first physical evidence of the airliner had been found. But the items turned out to be "fishing equipment and other flotsam," the Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement.

In Malaysia, more than two dozen relatives of Chinese passengers on Flight 370 arrived from China on Sunday to press Malaysian officials for more information about the inquiry.

Hishammuddin reaffirmed Monday that the Malaysian government intended to host the families at a briefing with high-level officials and said the meeting would be broadcast to Beijing for relatives of passengers there.

The Malaysian government has endured withering criticism from the relatives and friends of Chinese passengers, both in Malaysia and in China, who have accused officials of withholding information and not doing enough to find the plane.

The group that arrived Sunday protested at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur and demanded an apology from the Malaysian government for declaring last week that the plane had ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean, saying there was insufficient evidence to support that conclusion.