Aviation
Missing Malaysia plane: Search shifts to New area
SYDNEY — The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entered a new phase on Thursday as authorities moved the search area for the third time in as many months, focusing on an area of the southern Indian Ocean buffeted by fierce winds and storms.
Authorities conceded the decision to move to an area as much as 600 miles south from where ships and planes have been deployed since early April is based on educated guesswork, given the limited data about the final movements of Flight 370 after it went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The shift comes as private contractors ready plans to take over what would be the largest undersea search mission in history, with a deadline for bids on Monday. Authorities are offering as much as 60 million Australian dollars (US$56 million) for a company or research organization to carry out a search over 20,000 square miles of remote ocean using sonar equipment that may take as long as 300 days to complete.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau aims to spend about four weeks reviewing the bids before selecting a contractor to lead the rebooted search. That contractor will then have only a month to mobilize crew, equipment and ships from around the world to the new search area ahead of a restart in August.Scientists and aviation experts spent weeks analyzing signals sent from Flight 370 to a telecommunications satellite owned by Inmarsat PLC before concluding the plane likely flew faster than previously thought and turned south out of the Malacca Strait. These experts now think the plane covered a greater distance across the Indian Ocean.
“The only data we have now is the Inmarsat data,” said Charitha Pattiaratchi, head oceanographer at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “There is no physical data, and that’s the issue–you’re in the dark.”
Experts remain confident that the plane crashed within a few miles of a final ping transmission sent to an Inmarsat satellite on the morning of March 8, which they believe represents the moment the plane ran out of fuel. But the plane could have been anywhere along an arc extending thousands of miles of sea when it went down.
Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, said it was “highly, highly likely” that Flight 370 was on autopilot when it traveled across the Indian Ocean because of the orderly path it is believed to have taken until it ran out of fuel.Past searches costing tens of millions of dollars have focused on areas along the arc around 700 miles apart, from desolate patches of sea near the French Antarctic territory of Kerguelen, to an area of offshore coral reefs near Exmouth, which is exposed to tropical cyclones. None of these operations, which involved military aircraft and ships from nations including the U.S. and China, found any debris related to the missing plane.
For searchers preparing to renew the hunt for the missing plane, the new area has some advantages. It shifts away from an area that included extremely deep seas such as the Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone, a tectonic rip in the Earth’s surface agitated by movements between the Australian and Greater Indian continental plates that descends down to 4.9 miles at its lowest point.
That area would only have been accessible to one device–the Chinese-owned Jiaolong minisub–after another underwater vehicle known as the Nereus imploded off the coast of New Zealand in May, said David Gallo, director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The new search area runs from the South East Indian Ridge in the south – a narrow area of sea that has been mapped by U.S. researchers in the 1990s – through a deep abyssal plain to just west of the Broken Ridge, which is as shallow as 3,250 feet in places.However, this new area also presents several challenges. It covers a desolate patch of sea close to the “Roaring 40s,” an area lashed year round by fierce winds and storms. Previous air-and-sea search efforts in the remote southern Indian Ocean through late March had to be called off a number of times when waves and gale-force winds became too dangerous, requiring even the 516 foot navy vessel HMAS Success to evacuate the search area.
Two ships have been conducting bathymetric surveys of the sea floor as a precursor to a more detailed undersea search. These maps of the seabed are important because they will help expensive underwater sonar equipment navigate possible ocean trenches and ridges, limiting the chances that they could be damaged or lost.
The Chinese ship Zhu Kezhen has most recently been active in the southern part of the old search area, near where the Haixun 01 picked up acoustic signals with hand-held hydrophones in early April, a person close to the investigation said. Dutch oil and gas company Fugro NV’s bathymetric vessel the Equator was deployed to help speed up the bathymetric survey in mid-June, and sent to an area further south that is in an area indicative of the new search zone, a person close to the investigation said.It isn’t clear how much of this bathymetric work overlapped with the refined search area unveiled Thursday.
Searchers in planes and aboard ships initially focused of an area of the Indian Ocean far to the west of Perth from mid-March, based on preliminary calculations and reinforced by a number of satellite sightings of possible debris. However, objects pulled from the ocean turned out to be floating garbage such as discarded fishing equipment.
Authorities then shifted the search area some 700 miles northeast in late March based on radar analysis. A series of electronic signals detected underwater using a pinger locator towed behind the Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield raised hopes of a breakthrough. However, an underwater search using the Bluefin-21 drone failed to find any trace of the missing plane
– WALLSTREET JOURNAL
Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo) has welcomed efforts to promote safe helicopter services across Africa in a proposed Regional Action Plan (RAP).
The plan, according to a company statement, is the highlight of a workshop organised in Lagos within the week by the Aviation subcommittee of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) in partnership with London-based safety advocacy group, HeliOffshore.
Biztellers reports that the two-day Offshore Helicopter Industry Safety Workshop (OHISW) with the theme “Developing a Regional Action Plan,” followed on from a similar session last year which SNEPCo sponsored.
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It also provided administrative and logistical support for this year’s conference which was sponsored by ExxonMobil. SNEPCo, which pioneered Nigeria’s deepwater production at Bonga in 2005, relies on helicopter shuttles for operations and supports the workshop as part of its contributions towards safe services in Nigeria.
In an address at the opening session delivered by General Manager Contracting and Supply Chain, Charles Oranyeli, Managing Director SNEPCo, Ronald Adams said: “By developing a regional action plan, we can move beyond dialogue to alignment, ensuring that the safety leadership, industry standards, and collaborative approaches championed last year are embedded in a common roadmap for collective improvement. The most effective solutions will come not from isolated efforts, but from partnership, standardization, and coordinated action across the region.”
The workshop was attended by more than 80 representatives from oil and gas companies, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), helicopter operators and original equipment manufacturers.
The event concluded with participants deciding action items for the proposed Regional Action Plan including Search and Rescue (SAR) initiatives, implementation of IOGP Report 690 standards and establishment of formal industry leadership forums.
The IOGP has been active for over 50 years, supporting its more than 90 members around the world to promote “excellence in safe, efficient and sustainable energy.”
The Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) has declared that airlines operating in Nigeria have come under financial pressure following a sharp increase in the price of Jet-A1, also known as aviation fuel.
According to the group, the price of aviation fuel, has surged to about N1,800 per litre in many parts of the country, from about N1,000 per litre two weeks ago. This amounts to almost an 80 per cent increase within a short period.
Aviation fuel remains the largest cost component in airline operations, accounting for about 30 to 35 per cent of total operating expenses.
Industry stakeholders have linked the latest spike to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which has pushed up global energy prices.
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Speaking on Channels Television on Friday, the spokesperson for the Airline Operators of Nigeria, Prof Obiora Okonkwo, said the surge had placed airlines under severe financial strain.
According to him, most carriers have so far refrained from immediately transferring the additional cost burden to passengers, despite the pressure on their operations.
“Two weeks ago, we were getting Jet-A1 at about N1,000 per litre, which today is about N1,800, and even more in some stations. We have experienced an increase of about 80 per cent. That’s quite a spike,” Okonkwo said.
He explained that airlines were currently absorbing the losses in order to avoid worsening the economic burden on the travellers.
“We are not in a business where you can easily adjust your ticket price. Right now what we are doing is that we are bleeding. We are taking the blow. We are selling tickets at very non-profitable prices. We are losing a lot of money,” he said.
Okonkwo warned that the situation might not be sustainable if fuel prices continue to rise without government intervention.
“Obviously, adjustments will be expected anytime soon. But again, we are very sensitive to the economic situation of Nigerians and our travellers,” he added.
He noted that developments in the global oil market, particularly the recent release of reserve crude oil, could influence fuel prices in the coming weeks.
Okonkwo also urged the Federal Government to explore engagement with the Dangote Refinery as part of efforts to stabilise aviation fuel supply locally.
“We were more hopeless in a situation where there was no refinery in Nigeria in the last two years. Now that we have a refinery, we are hopeful that we can find a solution around it,” he said.
According to him, if the spike persists, some airlines may struggle to continue absorbing the losses associated with the rising cost of aviation fuel.
Meanwhile, the AON spokesperson also reacted to the decision by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to sanction about five airlines over alleged price fixing.
Okonkwo said while the commission has regulatory powers, the aviation sector remains deregulated, making coordinated price fixing unlikely.
“There is no meeting of airlines where they agree to fix prices. Fixing prices would mean operating as a cartel, and that is not the case,” he said.
He explained that airline ticket pricing varies widely because different aircraft types attract different operating costs.
“Each airline determines its fares based on its own operational costs,” he said.
Okonkwo added that airlines must also demonstrate financial viability to regulators as part of the conditions for maintaining their operating licences.
“At every point in time, you must prove to the regulators that you are financially viable and capable of sustaining operations,” he said.
He urged regulators to take into account the fragile nature of the aviation industry when making policy decisions affecting airlines.
An Air Peace flight from Lagos to Port Harcourt has suffered a disruption, after the aircraft was affected by a bird strike on arrival at the Port Harcourt International Airport.
The airline made the disclosure on Thursday in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Osifo-Whiskey Efe.
He added that the incident necessitated safety checks on the affected aircraft and the deployment of another aircraft to convey passengers on subsequent flights.
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“We deeply empathise with passengers affected by this unforeseen incident and are working diligently to minimise disruptions,” Efe said.
The latest incident adds to the growing challenge of bird strikes faced by local airlines.
In December 2025, Air Peace disclosed that it recorded 49 bird strikes across Nigeria between January and September, stressing that even a single strike could ground an aircraft for weeks.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the airline, Allen Onyema, had said on Arise TV that bird strikes constituted a major operational challenge, often leading to costly repairs and serious disruptions to flight schedules.
“One bird strike could cripple your aircraft for the next month. At that moment, there is no two ways about it. These bird strikes often lead to costly delays and serious disruptions in flight schedules,” he said.
He added that losses from such incidents compound other challenges facing Nigerian airlines, including heavy taxation and operational constraints.
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