AUSTRALIA and Malaysia vowed yesterday to keep searching for the missing Flight 370 passenger jet despite no sign of wreckage after almost seven weeks, and as bad weather again grounded aircraft and an undersea drone neared the end of its first full mission.
But Australian authorities said unidentified material washed up on the coast of Western Australia was being investigated for possible links to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had earlier acknowledged the search strategy could change if seabed scans taken by the US Navy drone failed to turn up a trace of the plane, which went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.
"We may well re-think the search but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery," he said.
"The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows."
The Bluefin-21 drone, a key component in the search after the detection of audio signals believed to be from the plane's black box flight recorder, is due to end its first full mission in the southern Indian Ocean within days.
The finding of material on the southern tip of Western Australia was the first report of suspected debris in weeks and the first since the detection of what were believed to be signals on April 4.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article