Australian authorities searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have lost a deep-water sonar detector being used to scour a patch of the Indian ocean floor where the plane is believed to have gone down almost two years ago.
MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014, sparking one of the great mysteries in aviation history.
A piece of the plane washed up on Reunion in July 2015 but no further trace has been found. Reports of a piece of suspected wreckage found off the Thailand have now been dismissed.
The main search, using a sonar detector known as a towfish, is focused on a 50,000sq mile sea floor area in the Indian Ocean. That has now run into trouble and the sonar lost, although a second one is being prepared.
Earlier this month the Joint Agency Coordination Centre reiterated it would complete searching the seafloor by the end of June, ruling out a further expansion without new confirmation on the aircraft's location.
The Australian-led underwater search is one of the most expensive ever conducted. With the towfish delay what happens in June, assuming no results, remains to be seen. http://jacc.gov.au
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