Post date: Mar 12, 2014 4:29:56 PM
Vietnam resumes its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines airliner, after briefly scaling down its operations.
PHU QUOC AIRPORT, VIETNAM (MARCH 12, 2014)(REUTERS) - A Vietnamese naval officer said they had fully resumed their search for a missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft on Wednesday (March 12) after earlier announcing it had scaled back its operations.
Flight MH370 disappeared from civilian radar screens in the early hours of Saturday morning, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, as it flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand bound for Beijing.Earlier on Wednesday, a senior Vietnamese official said Hanoi had asked Malaysian authorities for information about reports that the plane, carrying 239 passengers and crew, had changed direction after its last known contact on Saturday but it had yet to receive any response. He said searches by sea were being suspended.
But later in the day, the deputy commander of the Vietnamese Navy, Admiral Le Minh Thanh, said operations had resumed.
"We are still maintaining activities both in the air and at sea for this search. We received unconfirmed information last night that there were indications the craft might be in the Malacca Strait. That's why we planned to reduce the frequency of the flights. However, this morning, our operations are being conducted as usual," he said.
It was originally believed that the plane must have come down off the coast of Vietnam.
But now Malaysia's military has traced what could have been the missing jetliner to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hundreds of miles from its last known position, the country's air force chief said on Wednesday.
Despite the new clues, Admiral Le Minh Thanh said the search in Vietnam's coastal waters continued.
"Today we did not see any signs and I think tomorrow we might continue to search at those same spots because at any spot, there might be no indications today, but they might appear tomorrow," he said.
Authorities are continuing to search around both locations - at the last known position of the plane over the Gulf of Thailand and around the radar plotting site where the Malacca Strait meets the Andaman Sea.
In total, the search is over 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 sq km), an area the size of Hungary or Indiana.
There have been no confirmed sighting of the plane or any debris.