MALAYSIA AIRLINE UPDATE:- CONTRACT TO GET 300 DAY TO COMPLETE SEARCH

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The private contractor hired to find Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU +2.86% Flight 370 will have 300 days to complete an undersea search for the missing jetliner in the southern Indian Ocean.

Tender documents released by the Australian government on Wednesday outline for the first time the requirements of the rebooted search, the largest of its type in history. But they also highlight continued uncertainty about the operation, including the terrain of the seabed and even the area to be scoured using high-tech sonar equipment.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it still hasn't fixed upon an exact search area because it is continuing to analyze satellite communications and calculations on the Boeing BA -0.01%777's likely performance. It didn't elaborate, although experts say there has been no new data for several weeks.

The winning contractor faces a number of aggressive deadlines to search an area of 60,000 square kilometers—roughly equivalent to the size of West Virginia—as authorities make a fresh attempt to locate wreckage of the plane, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

A map accompanying the tender documents shows authorities still plan to focus the search on a 650-kilometer-long section of an arc drawn from the final ping transmission between Flight 370 and an Inmarsat ISAT.LN +0.04% PLC telecommunications satellite. This final digital handshake is considered by authorities to represent the moment the plane ran out of fuel and its electrical system restarted. Authorities believe Flight 370 crashed into the sea shortly afterward.

Global experts have 26 days to devise a plan to search the area, including locating equipment and crew. Australian authorities are then likely to spend around four weeks reviewing each bid before picking a winner, a person within the tender process said. The successful company or organization must then mobilize its team and equipment from across the world within a month of signing a contract, meaning the search is unlikely to begin until late August.

Once the search begins, the contractor is required to map 5,000 square kilometers of seabed every 25 days or risk payments being withheld.

Companies tendering for the job don't know the likely terrain of the sea floor, which is currently being surveyed by search authorities. Their sonar equipment must be able to withstand water depths of 6,000 meters, with bidders required to explain how their devices will navigate "holes, trenches, ridges, steep gradients" and a sea floor that may be composed of "silt, sand, rock, and possibly manganese nodules"

The hunt for Flight 370 has suffered repeated setbacks and false leads. A costly air-and-sea search of the Indian Ocean involving military aircraft and ships turned up only garbage, while satellite imagery of possible floating debris didn't yield a breakthrough. Late last month, Australian authorities said the area of the Indian Ocean around ping transmissions thought to have come from Flight 370's black-box flight recorders could now be "discounted" following an undersea search.

Sonar equipment used in that search encountered crevasses up to 70 meters deep, according to Australian naval Commander James Lybrand. The only other knowledge of the sea floor currently available comes from echo sounder readings from ships like the Soviet research vessel Vityaz, now a floating museum in the Russian port of Kaliningrad. Crude satellite altimetry that approximates sea floor terrain based on radar readings of the relative height of the ocean surface also provides rough clues to the challenges facing searchers.

The tender documents contain no specific details of the money available for the search, but stipulate that searchers will be paid in full whether or not they find the plane as long as they completely scan the search area using sonar equipment. Australian authorities have previously said a maximum of 60 million Australian dollars ($55.5 million) will be set aside for the search, although this must also cover bathymetry costs and the recovery of debris under separate contracts.

Officials from the ATSB—the government department running the search—have the right to travel on board ships scanning the area. The ATSB will also decide which areas of ocean will be searched as a priority, rather than give free rein to the private contractor.

The contractor or team chosen for the job will have to comply with prohibitions against divulging confidential information obtained from Australian authorities, and refrain from making any public comments.