Malaysia Airjet News Update: Underwater hunt will be stretched out to include a vast swath of ocean floor that may take at least eight months to thoroughly search while the aerial search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was called off Monday according to Australian officials. According to New York Daily, the countries searching for the missing Malaysian jet are assessing a claim by a resource survey company that it found possible plane wreckage in the northern Bay of Bengal, Malaysia's defense minister said Tuesday.
Australia-based GeoResonance Pty Ltd. emphasized that it is not certain it found the Malaysia Airlines missing aircraft since March 8, but it called for its findings to be investigated. According to New York Daily, the location is far from where the underwater and surface search has been concentrated for weeks.
Reports say that the company uses imaging, radiation chemistry and other technologies to search for oil, gas or mineral deposits. In hunting for Flight 370, it used the same technology to look on the ocean floor for chemical elements that would be present in a Boeing 777: aluminum, titanium, jet fuel residue and others.
In a statement, GeoResonance compared multispectral images taken March 5 and 10 before and after the plane's disappearance and found a specific area where the data varied between those dates. The location is about 190 kilometers (118 miles) south of Bangladesh.
"Malaysia is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information," Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement. He said that China and Australia were aware of the announcement.
"The only motivation is to help the families of the missing passengers and crew, knowing the company has the technology capable of the task," GeoResonance said. The company began trying to find the plane before the official search area moved to the southern Indian Ocean.
According to Fox News, up to date, there is no confirmed debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
"It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.
"Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area," he added.
