China's Transport Minister Yang Chuantang promised Monday that Beijing will continue uninterrupted and intensified efforts to search for MH370, he said after the trilateral meeting. That meeting will also perform "something of an audit" of all the information gathered to date, including the satellite data, he said. Announcing a new phase in the multinational hunt, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the search of the ocean floor will be intensified and expanded over a much larger area than has been covered to date. The plane disappeared March 8 with 239 passengers and crew en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield is berthed near Perth on Monday as it replenishes its supplies and conducts maintenance on underwater vehicle Artemis Bluefin-21, which has been searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. But tenders will soon be put out for specialist vehicles that can dive deeper than Bluefin-21 and recover debris, and also for towed sonar equipment to conduct more detailed underwater mapping of sea floor that "has never been mapped", he said. "You can count on one hand the number of devices that can do this work, when you talk about towed sonar devices," said Angus Houston, chief coordinator of the joint search effort. More hardware will be "in the water" in the next two months, said Truss, who promised there would be no long interruptions in the search as occurred during the two-year hunt for the black boxes of the 2009 Air France disaster. All nations involved have borne their own costs to date, said Truss. Compared to other plane crashes, "we've got very little to work on," admitted Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who still insisted the searchers "are on the right track." At a meeting Wednesday in Canberra, experts from the three countries will discuss what other assets are required for the search's new phase, he said.The extreme depths involved mean there are "only a handful of pieces of relevant machinery in the world," and few oceanographic vessels capable of mapping such depths, said Truss, who expects the private sector to provide most of the required equipment. (Photo: Greg Wood, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 
 
 "It's very sensible to go back" to ensure "there are no flaws in that, the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right," Houston said in Canberra Monday.
– The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is growing, officials say, as searchers prepare to map a wide swath of the ocean floor in a new phase of the effort. "We know very clearly the area of the follow-up search will be even broader, with more difficulties and tougher tasks," says China's transport minister. "For the next stage involving sonar and other autonomous vehicles, potentially at very great depths, we need to have an understanding of the ocean floor," says Australia's deputy PM, per CNN. The new search area has "never been mapped." Officials will be looking for help from private companies; they doubt firms will need much financial incentive, USA Today reports. "There's no reward big enough," says Malaysia's acting transport minister, but if a company can find the plane, it will win instant worldwide fame, he notes. Search leaders are hoping a single firm will take on the task to avoid continued coordination problems, the Wall Street Journal notes. Officials also plan to go through all existing data once again. "It's very sensible to go back" to be certain "there are no flaws in that—the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right," says search coordinator Angus Houston.