Debris on shore not from plane, Aussies say

CANBERRA, Australia - Australian officials said today that after examining detailed photographs of unidentified material that washed ashore in the southwestern part of the country they are satisfied it is not a clue in the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the material, which washed ashore 6 miles east of Augusta in western Australia, is not from missing Flight 370, which disappeared March 8.

In an earlier announcement, the Malaysian government said Wednesday that it had approved the formation of an international investigative team to determine what happened to the plane and its 239 passengers and crew members, and what lessons could be learned.

Augusta is more than 1,100 miles from the patch of ocean where an Australian defense ship, Ocean Shield, has been operating an unmanned submersible vehicle, Bluefin-21, which is scanning the seafloor for signs of the missing plane, and in particular the two flight recorders that are crucial to determining why the plane veered so drastically off course.

The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, en route to Beijing, but then veered off course and continued flying, according to radar data. Investigators believe it ended up in the ocean off western Australia, where the Ocean Shield has been searching about 1,000 miles northwest of the state capital, Perth. Augusta is about 170 miles south of Perth.

Investigators have said the best lead to the plane’s whereabouts remains four sets of signals - believed to be from beacons attached to the flight recorders - picked up April 5 and April 8 by Ocean Shield using a towed pinger locator. But no debris has been found that can be linked to the missing plane, and the Bluefin-21, which is close to completing the underwater search in a circle with a 6-mile radius around one of the detected pings, has found no evidence of the plane at the bottom of the ocean.

At a news conference Wednesday in Canberra, the Australian capital, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he remained confident that the plane’s wreckage was somewhere in the area identified by searchers and that the hunt there would continue.

In the first weeks, Malaysia’s handling of the search for the plane was dogged by false leads and confusing official statements. In announcing plans for the international investigative team at the news conference, the Malaysian defense minister and acting transportation minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, presented it as a normal step in line with international standards. But he also suggested that the move would help restore confidence in Malaysia’s efforts.

“It’s just an opportunity for all the experts that have gathered here to actually look at what we are going through, and see how that relates to the aviation landscape for the future,” Hishammuddin said. “Basically, that expert committee also gives an assurance to the people out there that Malaysia’s got nothing to hide, and at the end of the day the truth will prevail.” Information for this article was contributed by Rod McGuirk of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 04/24/2014

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