Submersible seeking jetliner may soon finish first sweep

Hong Kong: An unmanned submersible vehicle searching the ocean floor off Western Australia for signs of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane could finish an initial sweep of the area within five to seven days, search organizers said Saturday.

But a Malaysian official emphasized that the searchers would press on if no evidence of the aircraft was found.

An Australian naval ship, the Ocean Shield, is using the submarine, a Bluefin-21, to comb the area where search organizers have concluded that the plane most likely fell into the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people on board. The searchers hope to find the flight recorders, which will be crucial in determining why the plane veered so abruptly and mysteriously from its planned route on March 8.

Some reports had said the initial hunt with the Bluefin-21 could take up to six weeks. But Angus Houston, the Australian official overseeing the search, said that was an overstatement. Now, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Center  says that with luck the Bluefin-21 could finish scouring the area, more than 1,000 miles northwest of Perth, Australia, within a week.

If the weather is good and the submersible does not suffer technical problems, "we should complete the search of the focused underwater area in five to seven days," the center said.

Since the submersible began searching the ocean bed Monday, it has gone to depths greater than 15,000 feet. From Monday to early Saturday, it covered about 51 square miles, the search organizers said. On Sunday, they said the craft had scanned about half of the area that is their initial focus: a circle with a 6.2-mile radius centered on a signal detected by the Ocean Shield on April 8.

The Malaysian government has continued to play a leading role in the search. On Saturday, Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defense minister, said that the effort would go on even if the search area designated as most promising failed to yield evidence. "The search will always continue," he said. "It is just a matter of approach."