Malaysia Airlines MH370: Search for missing plane heads underwater as black box falls silent
An unmanned submarine will be sent to try to find wreckage from Malaysia Airlines MH370 after signals suspected to be from the aeroplane's black box fell silent.
In a media briefing on Monday afternoon, Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said no acoustic trace of the black box had been detected for six days.
"We haven't had a single detection in six days. So I guess it's time to go underwater," he said.
"The experts have determined that the Australian Defence vessel Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle, Bluefin-21, as soon as possible."
Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says the vehicle will first search an area of about 40 square kilometres.
"The deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle has the potential to take us a further step towards visual identification since it offers a possible opportunity to detect debris from the aircraft on the ocean floor," he said.
"It will take the autonomous underwater vehicle two hours to get down to the bottom of the ocean.
"It will then be on task for 16 hours. It will then take two hours to return to the surface and four hours to download and analyse the data collected.