[Peetwo]

Ding Dong the Muppet is gone -  Or is he?? 

WARNING: Bucket will be required!

Via Binger at the Oz:

MH370 search should go on, says outgoing ATSB chief Martin Dolan
Mitchell Bingemann
The Australian
12:00AM July 1, 2016

The man in charge of the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 believes the search should go on if no wreckage is recovered.

The possibility of locating the missing Boeing 777 is fast diminishing as the two-year hunt this week entered the last 10,000sq km of its designated 120,000sq km search area.

But Martin Dolan — who yesterday hung up his hat as the chief of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau leading the $180m effort on behalf of the Malaysian, Australian and Chinese governments — said if the search failed governments should consider extending it to new areas.

“Of course (I’d like to see it continue). This has been two years of our lives focused on this task, so of course you want to see it to completion — of course we want to find that aircraft,” Mr Dolan told The Australian on his last day as chief of the ATSB.

“The instinct of a professional investigator would be to find this aircraft so we can find evidence that will help us solve the mystery of what happened.

“But I also recognise there comes a point when governments have to make a decision about the level of resourcing that can be made available and at the moment government are saying that resources are only available to search 120,000sq km.”

Mr Dolan, who has led the ATSB for the past seven years, said not finding the wreckage would be one of the biggest regrets of his working life.

“This has been such a big part of my working life over the last two years, so regret is the right word,” he said.

“But while there is regret that we haven’t found the aircraft, there is also a sense of pride, because the team that’s doing the work and all the professional capability and technology and everything that has been brought to bear, everything possible that could be done has been done really well. So I can take some pride in that.”

Despite finishing his term as the head of the ATSB without finding MH370, Mr Dolan said he remained hopeful the aircraft would be found in the area they had been searching.
“The more area the cover the more you have to review your probabilities and so there is a diminishing level of confidence that the aircraft is there,” he said.

“But we are still in a priority area and it is still quite possible that the aircraft will be found within this search area. So we haven’t by any means given up, and we will complete the job the governments have given us to search that area and find the aircraft, or if we are unsuccessful, then to eliminate that area from the search.”

The search for MH370 was scheduled to conclude in July but severe weather conditions and 15m waves have severely hampered the investigators’ work. The search has been extended to August to compensate, but Mr Dolan conceded that it was now looked like the hunt would take even longer than that.

“We’ve had seriously bad weather this winter. Last winter was much milder than we are encountering this time,” he said.

“So there are still several months to go. Certainly it is possible that the search will go through October.”

In the two years since the plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board, five pieces of debris believed to come from the aircraft have been found. Last week another piece that appears to be from a Boeing 777 washed ashore on an island near Tanzania.

It is not clear the piece came from MH370, and Malaysian authorities are sending it to the ATSB for closer inspection.

“We haven’t had access to it yet, but we are coming to an agreement with our Malaysian colleagues that it will be brought to Australia for closer examination,” MR Dolan said.
“We can’t comment at this stage on authenticity but the Malaysians are interested in it enough to bring it here for closer examination.”

Last round of Beaker bollocks - hopefully??


MTF...P2