MH370: Air search suspended due to poor weather conditions

The planned air search of the missing flight MH370 has been suspended today due to poor weather conditions as a result of the Tropical Cyclone Jack.

It has been determined that the current weather conditions are resulting in heavy seas and poor visibility, and would make any air search activities ineffective and potentially hazardous.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) had planned for a search of an area totalling approximately 49,491 square kilometres.

The 10 ships involved in today’s search will however, continue with their planned activities.

The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is currently completing mission nine in the underwater search area. It has searched approximately two thirds of the focused underwater search area to date and no contacts of interest have been found.

The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of 10km radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection which occurred on April 8.