Airplane not at same place where possible debris spotted: expert

The missing Malaysian Airlines airliner will not be at the same place where possible debris of the jet have been spotted in the southern Indian Ocean, if they are confirmed parts of the aircraft, an Australian aviation expert told Xinhua on Friday.  [Special coverage]

Professor Jason Middleton, head of School of Aviation, New South Wales university, told Xinhua the debris would move around 40-100 km per day in the ocean and after 10 days, they could be around 1,000 km or more away from the crash site.

The Australian government has said it would take 48 hours to confirm if the debris found were parts of the missing plane or not.

Middleton said it was because debris in the water will be in many pieces, most of which are unrecognizable. Ships will be deployed to pick up the debris, which will then be identified by experts.

According to Middleton, the debris collected would be sent to labs for evaluation. They will be identified by an expert from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) although any large parts may remain in government custody in Perth.

When asked about the examination process, the professor said the debris is sorted according to where the investigators think it came from in the plane. Once parts have been collected, each individual part will be identified as to exactly what part of the plane it came from, and inspected carefully to see if there is any evidence of fire explosion, cracking, breaking, etc. "There will be a team of people doing this, each with expertise in their own area. Maintenance engineers will be looking at the engines, and avionics experts will be looking at the electronics. If found, the "black box" flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will be opened and the data read into specialized computers. This data will then be analysed,"he said.

Middleton noted that it will be very difficult to backtrack the currents to find out where the debris came from, as there is little data on currents in the southern India Ocean. Even when estimates of the crash zone are made, extensive searching will be needed to locate the wreckage.

This is not the first time a large commercial flight has mysteriously disappeared. In 2009, Air France Flight 447 carrying 228 people vanished over the Atlantic from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and it took nearly two years to locate the wreckage of plane and retrieve its black boxes.

Compared with that disaster, the task this time will be more challenging, Middleton said.