US Navy Captain Mark Mathews of the Bluefin search team said the initial launch on Monday night took place “in the very far corner of the area it is searching, so they are just shifting the search box a little bit away from that deep water and proceeding with the search.”
The search for the missing plane could take up to two months as the underwater vehicle takes six times longer to cover the same area as the towed pinger locater, officials said.
“It is estimated that it will take the AUV anywhere from six weeks to two months to scan the entire search area,” Lt J G Daniel S Marciniak, a spokesman for the US Seventh Fleet, said in a statement yesterday.
Meanwhile, the aerial and sea search for the plane continued with up to 11 military aircraft, three civil aircraft and 11 ships taking part in today's operations.
Finding the black box and the wreckage are crucial to know what happened on March 8 before the Beijing-bound plane with 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals, mysteriously vanished on March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
