MH370 missing plane update: Malaysian Defense Minister '99.9 percent' confident plane will be found soon

Wikipedia

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein is now confident that the debris of the missing plane will finally be found somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean seven months after the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 mysteriously disappeared en route to China.

The minister, who addressed the press while onboard the GO Phoenix, one of the vessels used in the search mission, pointed out that he trusts the accuracy of the technology used by the search team in trying to find the missing Boeing 777.

"We're looking at satellite technology... the technical committee has got to zoom in into the areas of search, but if the question just now was based on the technology that was available and we are looking in the right place, we're talking about 99.9 per cent," Hussein stated, as quoted by ABC Australia.

The search vessel is currently docked in Fremantle, Western Australia to resupply after spending 10 days performing thorough search operations over 1,200 square kilometers of ocean floor in its designated area in the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau alerted Indonesian residents to be on guard for possible debris that could surface in the Southern Indian Ocean which is just about 3,500 kilometers away from the country's coastal area.

According to reports, the search vessel called Fugro Discovery is already stationed at its assigned area. It will start the sonar scans right away.

"It is possible that some materials may have drifted to the coastline of Indonesia and an alert has been issued in that country requesting that the authorities be alerted to any possible debris from the aircraft," the advisory from the ATSB stated.

The agency also reported that they still receive information from different individuals who have seen different materials along the Australian coastline, speculating that it could be a part of the wreckage from the missing Malaysian Airlines plane.

"The ATSB reviews all of this correspondence carefully but drift modeling undertaken by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has suggested that if there were any floating debris, it is far more likely to have travelled west, away from the coastline of Australia," the bureau reported.

Before the end of October, the GO Phoenix and the Fugro Discovery will be joined by a third search vessel called the Equator to help give light about the whereabouts of the missing aircraft that contains 239 passengers bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.