Global media today has widely reported the Prime Minister of Malaysia's press conference stating it is beyond doubt that Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 9M-MRO has crashed into the Southern Indian Ocean following its as yet undetermined reason for diverting from its planned Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight over two weeks ago.
The search effort continues with a massive array of aircraft and vessels deployed to an area west/southwest of Perth as authorities attempt to find wreckage from the crash so as to determine what took place.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force had deployed Lockheed P3K Orion NZ4203 early in the search effort with the aircraft dispatched to Butterworth, Malaysia via Darwin arriving in the initial search area on 11 March. However data collected from satellites concluded the aircraft may well have crashed to the west of Australia and NZ4203 moved from Butterworth to Pearce north of Perth on 18 March retaining its "Kiwi Rescue 795" callsign. It then conducted a 10-hour sortie 19 March. The aircraft on the SAR mission was then swapped with NZ4204 and this Orion arrived at Pearce direct from Whenuapai 19 March as "Kiwi 027". NZ4204 flew its first SAR tasking on 20 March while NZ4203 departed Pearce for Butterworth.
For extensive coverage of aircraft currently tasked with the search be sure to check out:
Additional to the military aircraft has been a myriad of commercial/private jets utilising their long range capabilities to search the Indian Ocean. AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority) have taken on the responsibility of co-ordinating the search and in turn have contracted Execujet to provide search aircraft.
Global Express VH-TGG was the first jet noted and it flew from Essendon to Adelaide and Perth 21 March before then conducting a flight to the search area and the same was flown 22 March and 23 March.
Also on 22 March Global Express VH-ICV conducted a grid search along with Gulfstream 550 VH-LAL.
23 March saw Skytrader's Airbus A319ACJ VH-VHD as "Snowbird One" carry out a search grid of the area and it was joined on 24 March by flights carried out by Global Expresses VH-OCV and VH-TGG.
Today has seen Execujet's Gulfstream 650 ZK-KFB deploy from Wellington to Perth, presumably for inclusion in the search efforts.
This is not the first time the Wellington based Execujet aircraft has been utilised for such a role. In January 2013 ZK-KFB, then a Gulfstream 550, was flown to Hobart and carried out SAR duties over the southern ocean. A solo around the world yachtsman from France was forced to abandon his vessel for a life raft and ZK-KFB was used to provide communications while he awaited rescue by a merchant ship.
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| Launching off runway 34 at Wellington on its way to Perth 25 March 2014. |
