By Athena Yenko | November 27, 2014 10:24 PM EST
The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 became all the more complicated with an internal disagreement among investigators. The differences in their opinion resulted to the deployment of the search vessels in two separate priority areas, The Wall Street Journal or WSJ reported.
There are five teams of investigators searching for the missing MH370 - team of officials from Boeing, Inmarsat, France's Thales group, The United States National Transportation Safety Board and the Australian Defence Science and technology Organisation. The lead agency - Australian Transport Safety Bureau or ATSB - had asked each of the team to conduct their independent investigation. This is where the problem arises. When asked to draw their conclusions, "the investigators were divided, three against two, in their conclusions about where to concentrate the search," WSJ said.
"Originally we thought we had a consensus among the five groups, based on the best data available at the time. Once we refined the data again the methodologies diverge," ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan told WSJ in an interview.
In October, ATSB identified two priority search areas based on two different assumptions. One is that the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, and the other through identifying the possible flight paths derived from satellite signals. However, betting on two different possible crash sites will make finding the lost plane more difficult, not to mention the challenge posed by a limited budget allotted for the search operation, WSJ said in its report.
However, Dolan denied that there is rift among investigators during a separate interview by Airlineratings.com. He clarified that two priority search areas were identified because the teams had been utilising different methodologies in calculating flight paths. The results of these different methodologies are the ones that did not coincide, and not the investigators themselves.
"There is no disagreement, just the deliberate application of differing analysis models," Dolan told Airlineratings.com. he said that even with the different methodologies adopted by the investigating bodies, all teams agree that the final resting place of the missing plane is the seventh arc that expands from approximately 100 km off Exmouth to a point about 2,000 km southwest of Perth.
Source: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/574239/20141127/mh370-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-priority-search.htm#.VHdirjSUcxA
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