Flight MH370: Aerial search for missing plane called off

ABOVE: Australian officials announce the aerial search for missing flight MH370 will be called off. As searchers face increasingly long odds, what options remain open to them? 

LATEST HEADLINES:

• Australian Prime Minister says search area for missing plane will be expanded
• Japan defence minister says they will stop participating in search for missing plane
• Plane went missing almost two months ago on March 8

TORONTO – An aerial search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane that has dragged on for six weeks will officially end on Monday, Australian officials said.

The underwater hunt for the missing jet, however, will be expanded to include a massive swath of ocean floor that may take up to eight months to thoroughly search, said Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott said the U.S. Navy’s Bluefin 21 robotic submarine has spent weeks scouring the initial search area for Flight 370 in the remote Indian Ocean far off Australia’s west coast, but has found no trace of the missing aircraft.

Officials are now looking to bring in new equipment that can search a larger patch of seabed for the plane, he added.

READ MORE: Material that washed ashore in western Australia not from missing jet

“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,” Abbott told media in Canberra, the capital city of Australia.

“Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area,” Abbott said.

That will be a monumental task – and one that will take time, warned Angus Houston, head of the search effort.

“If everything goes perfectly, I would say we’ll be doing well if we do it in eight months,” he said, adding that weather and technical issues could prolong the search well beyond that estimate.

Radar and satellite data show the jet carrying 239 passengers and crew veered far off course on March 8 for unknown reasons during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

READ MORE: Robotic sub to finish scanning focused area in one week

Analysis indicates it would have run out of fuel in the remote section of ocean where the search has been focused.

But not a single piece of debris has been recovered since the massive multinational hunt began.

Japan defence minister says they will stop participating in search for missing plane

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Monday that Japan was ending its involvement in the search for the missing Malaysia Airways plane.

Onodera, who met with Japanese Self-Defence Force personnel at the Royal Australia Air Force base in Pearce, said he planned to issue an order on Monday to conclude Japan’s participation in the aerial search mission.

A Japanese Orion aircraft departed the base on Monday on its last flight to look for possible debris from the missing jet.

– with files from The Associated Press