 After four weeks, the search and investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has become the most expensive in aviation history. The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported today that the estimated cost has surpassed the US$50 million (RM164 million) that was spent on the two-year probe into Air France flight 447, which disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. The paper revealed that it has only been provided snippets of the costing but it was enough to come to the conclusion on the cost. As expected, the biggest expense in the search has involved ships, satellites, planes and submarines deployed first in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, and then in the remote reaches of the southern Indian Ocean. Quoting an Australian Defence spokesperson, the SMH said that HMAS Success, the Australian navy replenishment vessel deployed two weeks ago, costs about A$550,000 (RM1.67 million) a day to operate. The HMAS Toowoomba which joined the hunt for MH370 last week incurs costs for fuel, supplies and crew's wages totalling about A$380,000 a day. Combined, the two vessels have cost more than A$10 million while in the Indian Ocean. The United States Navy has also allocated US$3.6 million for the deployment of a pinger locator and underwater drone on the vessel that will search for the plane's black box recorders. On Wednesday, the Pentagon said that aside from the black box locators it had spent US$3.3 million on its ships and aircraft during operations to locate MH370. Vietnam, reportedly, spent more than US$8 million searching for the plane in the South China Sea, in the first week of the search and rescue operations. According to the SMH, as many as 12 aircraft scour the seas for debris from the plane each day. An air crash investigation expert, Geoff Dell from Central Queensland University, told the SMH that the cost of the various aircraft flying daily 10-hour sorties could reasonably come to about A$1 million a day, for a total of A$25 million over the past four weeks. And that would be even without taking into consideration the planes under the United States. Besides all the search and rescue costs, the Malaysian government, representing Malaysia Airlines, has also compensated US$5,000 to the families of all 227 passengers, and this comes to a total of A$1.25 million. All these known costs and estimates amount to about A$53 million. And that is still only part of the expenditure so far, given that 26 nations are currently involved in the search, including China which deployed seven out of the 40 naval vessels scouring the Indian Ocean. If one factors in the cost of intelligence analysts, police and air crash investigators from Malaysia, the US, Britain and France, among others, the costs just balloons even further, the SMH reported. - April 4, 2014. Via: TMI
|
Artikel Terpanas Minggu ini |
ADVERTISEMENT
72515
49
