KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
(AP) — 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.
The location is
far from where the underwater and surface search has been concentrated
for weeks. Australia-based GeoResonance Pty Ltd. stressed that it is not
certain it found the Malaysia Airlines plane missing since March 8, but
it called for its findings to be investigated.
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.
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, it said in a statement. The location is
about 190 kilometers (118 miles) south of Bangladesh.
Malaysian
Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Tuesday that China and
Australia were aware of the announcement. "Malaysia is working with its
international partners to assess the credibility of this information," a
statement from his office said.
The
Joint Agency Coordination Center, which is heading up the search off
Australia's west coast, dismissed the GeoResonance report, given that
the arc of ocean search crews have been scouring for weeks is well south
of the Bay of Bengal.
"The joint international
team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft
is in the southerly portion of the search arc," the center said in a
statement.
GeoResonance said
it began trying to find the plane before the official search area moved
to the southern Indian Ocean. "The only motivation is to help the
families of the missing passengers and crew, knowing the company has the
technology capable of the task," it said.
Flight
370 was carrying 239 passengers and crew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
when it disappeared the morning of March 8. Radar tracking and
communications from the cockpit showed the plane reached cruising
altitude without incident, but it veered off course for unknown reasons
and flew west across the Malay Peninsula.
India,
Bangladesh and other countries to the north have said they never
detected the plane in their airspace. The jet had contact with a
satellite from British company Inmarsat for a few more hours, and
investigators have concluded from that data that the flight ended in the
southern Indian Ocean.
An
underwater signal consistent with an aircraft's black boxes was detected
in that search area off western Australia on April 8, but no conclusive
evidence has been found.
GeoResonance
said it gave its preliminary findings to investigators on March 31 and
was surprised by a lack of response. That claim could not be confirmed.
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