REPUBLIKA.CO.ID,PERTH - The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in remote seas off Australia headed underwater on Friday, with a US Navy high tech "black box" locator deployed for the first time as the battery life of the cockpit data recorder dwindles.
Australian authorities said the so-called Towed Pinger Locator will be pulled behind navy ship HMAS Ocean Shield, searching a converging course on a 240 km (150 miles) track with British hydrographic survey ship HMS Echo.
"The area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence," Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told reporters in Perth.
"On best advice the locator beacon will last about a month before it ceases its transmissions so we're now getting pretty close to the time when it might expire."
On Monday it will be 30 days since the jetliner lost communications and disappeared from civilian radar less than an hour into an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
The Boeing 777 was briefly picked up on military radar on the other side of Malaysia and analysis of subsequent hourly electronic "handshakes" exchanged with a satellite led investigators to conclude the plane crashed far off the west Australian coast hours later.
Sonar may help find the plane's black box voice and data recorders that are key to unlocking what happened on the flight. The black box is equipped with a locator beacon that transmits "pings" when underwater, but which only has an expected battery life of around 30 days.
Experts have warned the Towed Pinger Locator may be of little use unless investigators can get a much better idea of exactly where the plane went into water, because its limited range and the slow speed at which it must be pulled behind the ship mean it cannot cover large areas of ocean quickly.
On Friday, up to 14 planes and nine ships were scouring the search area of about 223,000 sq km (86,000 sq miles) - roughly the size of the US state of Minnesota - some 1,680 km (1,040 miles) west-north-west of Perth, he said.
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