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Danny Lee, Angela Meng and Satish Cheney in Kuala Lumpur
A satellite image of one of the "possible objects" spotted in the Indian ocean about 2,350 kilometres off Australia. Photo: Reuters
The search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in one of the world's most remote places entered its second day Friday, as Australian authorities said the hunt for objects spotted by satellite had turned up nothing so far.
The search, some 2,260 kilometres off Australia's west coast, has been hampered by poor weather conditions and the fact that spotter planes only have enough fuel to remain in the area for a couple of hours before they are forced to turn back.
The satellite images, which could show debris from the missing Boeing 777 floating in the Indian Ocean, are the first "credible" leads in the investigation, officials said yesterday.
The "possible objects" - as they were described by the Australian government - were spotted 2,260 kilometres off the coast of Perth, thousands of nautical miles south of where the plane was last seen.
Australian authorities said in a statement early Friday that the first of five aircraft - a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion - had left a base in Western Australia at around dawn.
A civilian Gulfstream jet and a second Orion were expected to depart later Friday morning and a third Orion was due to fly out in the early afternoon to scour more than 35,000 square kilometres of ocean. A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft was scheduled to leave the base at about 4pm.
"It is a very long journey to the site and unfortunately aircraft can only have one or two hours over the search area before they need to return to the mainland for fuel,” said Warren Truss, who is currently Australia’s acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas.
"Clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search. Weather conditions are not particularly good and risk that they may deteriorate,” he added.
A handout picture of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion aircraft departing to support AMSA search for Flight MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean. Photo: Australian defence image library
Truss said officials were working to get more satellite images and stronger resolution to help search teams get a better sense of where the objects may be and how far they may have shifted since the initial images were captured.
“They will have moved because of tides and wind and the like, so the search area is quite broad,” he said.
The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St. Petersburg, with a Filipino crew of 20, arrived in the area yesterday and used searchlights after dark to continue the hunt for debris. It will continue the search today, said Ingar Skiaker of Hoegh Autoliners, speaking to reporters in Oslo.
The Norwegian ship, which transports cars, was on its way from South Africa to Australia, he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said another commercial ship and an Australian navy vessel were also en route to the search area.
Late last night, Canberra called off the air search due to thick cloud saying no debris had been found.
The leads come almost two weeks after flight MH370 vanished from radar screens over the South China Sea on March 8.
Since then, relatives of the 239 people on board the Boeing 777 - 154 of them Chinese - have remained in the dark over the fate of their loved ones.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) general manager John Young speaks during a press conference on the search for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Canberra, Australia, 20 March 2014. Photo: EPA
But even if the "objects" in the satellite photos are found - and if they turn out to be debris from the aircraft - it could be months, or even years, before the mystery of MH370 was solved, said Malaysian acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
At yesterday's daily press conference in Kuala Lumpur, he said: "The next step will be to find the black box. Sonar technology and other assets will have to be deployed in that effort."
The photographs released of the two "possible objects" are dated March 16, but Malaysian officials have not verified the exact date on which they were taken. This raises questions over how far they may have moved due to ocean currents and wind.
"Deep-sea searches and surveillance are things we are already looking into," Hishammuddin said.
Last night, a commercial Norwegian shipping vessel reached the remote stretch of the Indian Ocean depicted in the latest satellite photos.
The search also continued in the so-called "northern corridor" identified a few days ago, despite the possible breakthrough.
But the Chinese foreign ministry last night said analysis of radar and satellite data had confirmed the flight did not enter the Chinese territory that forms part of the northern corridor.
About 18 ships and 31 aircraft from countries including China, Indonesia and Malaysia are continuing to search along the projected flight path across the southern Indian Ocean.
Yesterday, distraught family members of the flight's Chinese passengers stormed a Kuala Lumpur meeting room ahead of the daily press conference, shouting their grievances about the lack of information from the Malaysian government.
But Hishammuddin said: "Assuming it is confirmed that the aircraft is located somewhere close to Australia, we will make arrangements to fly next of kin there."
Australia says suspected plane debris may have sunk
By Matt Siegel and A. Ananthalakshmi
PERTH, Australia/KUALA LUMPUR Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:00am EDT
A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion returns from a search for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean, at RAAF Base Pearce, north of Perth March 21, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Reed
(Reuters) - The international team hunting Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the remote southern Indian Ocean failed to turn up anything on Friday, and Australia's deputy prime minister said the suspected debris may have sunk.
Aircraft and ships have also renewed a search in the Andaman Sea between India and Thailand, going over areas that have already been exhaustively swept to find some clue to unlock one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation.
The Boeing 777 went missing almost two weeks ago off the Malaysian coast with 239 people aboard. There has been no confirmed sign of wreckage but two objects seen floating deep south in the Indian Ocean were considered a credible lead and set off a huge hunt on Thursday.
Australian authorities said the first aircraft to sweep treacherous seas on Friday about 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth was on its way back to base without spotting the objects picked out by satellite images five days ago.
"Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating," Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters in Perth. "It may have slipped to the bottom."
But the search was continuing and Australian, New Zealand and U.S. aircraft would be joined by Chinese and Japanese planes over the weekend.
"It's about the most inaccessible spot that you can imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Papua New Guinea, where he is on a visit.
"Now it could just be a container that's fallen off a ship. We just don't know, but we owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle."
India said it was sending two aircraft, a Poseidon P-8I maritime surveillance aircraft and a C-130 Hercules transporter, to join the hunt in the southern Indian Ocean. It is also sending another P-8I and four warships to search in the Andaman Sea, where the plane was last seen on military radar on March 8.
In New Delhi, officials said the search in areas around the Andaman island chain was not at the request of Malaysian authorities coordinating the global search for the airliner.
"All the navies of the world have SAR regions," said Capt. D.K. Sharma, an Indian navy spokesman, referring to search and rescue regions. "So we're doing it at our own behest."
Investigators suspect Flight MH370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing shortly after midnight on March 8, was deliberately diverted thousands of miles from its scheduled path. They say they are focusing on hijacking or sabotage but have not ruled out technical problems.
The search for the plane also continues in other regions, including a wide arc sweeping northward from Laos to Kazakhstan.
In the Indian Ocean, three Australian and two Japanese P-3 Orions joined a high-tech U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon and a civilian Bombardier Global Express jet to search the 23,000 square km (8,900 sq mile) zone, Australian and Malaysian authorities said.
A Norwegian merchant ship, the Hoegh St. Petersburg, was diverted to the area on Thursday and another vessel would arrive later on Friday.
An Australian navy ship was expected to arrive in the search area on Saturday and Britain's HMS Echo, a multi-purpose ocean survey vessel, was also heading to the region, Malaysia said.
China's icebreaker for Antarctic research, Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, will set off from Perth to search the area, Chinese state news agency Xinhua cited maritime authorities as saying. Up to five more Chinese ships, with three ship-borne helicopters, were steaming towards the search zone from across the Indian Ocean.
Australian authorities said they had not asked for the ships to search the area. About two-thirds of the missing plane's passengers were Chinese nationals.
Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that searchers were facing a "long haul" but were conscious that the clock was ticking. The plane's "black box" voice and data recorder only transmits an electronic signal for about 30 days before its battery dies, after which it will be far more difficult to locate.
It took investigators two years to find the black box from a Air France jetliner that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on a stormy night in June 2009.
"If we do not find it within the 30 days, it brings in other issues of how to locate it - as the French airline had to take two years. That comes into a different realm of search and rescue," Hishammuddin said.
STUDYING SATELLITES
There have been many false leads and no confirmed wreckage found from Flight MH370 since it vanished off Malaysia's east coast less than an hour after taking off.
There has also been criticism of the search operation and investigation, as more than two dozen countries scramble to overcome logistical and diplomatic hurdles.
Investigators piecing together patchy data from military radar and satellites believe that, minutes after its identifying transponder was switched off as it crossed the Gulf of Thailand, the plane turned sharply west, re-crossing the Malay Peninsula and following an established route towards India.
What happened next is unclear, but faint electronic "pings" picked up by one commercial satellite suggest the aircraft flew on for at least six hours.
A source with direct knowledge of the situation said that information gleaned from the pings had been passed to investigators within a few days, but it took Malaysia more than a week to narrow the search area to two large arcs - one reaching south to near where the potential debris was spotted, and a second crossing to the north into China and central Asia.
(Additional reporting by Jane Wardell in Sydney, Naomi Tajitsu in Wellington, A. Ananthalakshmi, Anuradha Raghu and Niluksi Koswanage in Kuala Lumpur, Neil Darby in Perth, Byron Kaye in Canberra, Mark Hosenball and Andrea Shalal in Washington, Nicholas Vinocur in Paris, Paul Sandle in London,; Frank Jack Daniel and Sruthi Gottipati in New Delhi; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Stuart Grudgings, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie)
China refused permission to search for missing plane in Indian waters
Posted by Craig Hill March 21, 2014 ⋅
India has declined China’s proposal to allow four of its warships to join the hunt for the MH370 jetliner near the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, even as it is now dispatching two aircraft to Malaysia to join the international search force that is now scanning southern Indian Ocean off Australia for the missing 777-200ER aircraft.
Officials on Thursday said China’s request to allow its four warships, including two frigates and a salvage vessel, to enter Indian territorial waters has been “politely turned down” since Indian warships and aircraft are already searching the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea around the 572-island cluster.
While the Chinese warships are free to sail in international waters, Indian forces will obviously be unhappy about their presence anywhere near the strategically-located Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
“The A&N command is our military outpost in the region, which overlooks the Malacca Strait and dominates the Six-Degree Channel. We don’t want Chinese warships sniffing around in the area on the pretext of hunting for the missing jetliner or anti-piracy patrols,” said an official.
An Indian P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance plane and a C-130J special operations aircraft, with electro-optic and infra-red sensors, meanwhile will fly to Malaysia on Friday morning to join the international search force there.
The new region off Australia is now on everyone’s radar screens after two objects, which could be debris from the missing Malaysian Airlines 777-200ER aircraft, were spotted floating there by a satellite on Thursday.
“Indian Navy already has four warships (INS Satpura, Sahyadari, Saryu and Batti Malv) deployed in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in continuation of the search for the jetliner. Extensive air searches are also being conducted with three aircraft (P-8I, C-130J and Dornier-228) in the area,” said an officer.
“In addition to all this, the P-8I and C-130J will be joining the international force in Malaysia by Friday afternoon. We are in continuous touch with the Royal Malaysian Navy and Air Force from our maritime operations centre at New Delhi to render all possible help,” he added.
Danny Lee and Angela Meng in Kuala Lumpur and Stephen Chen in Beijing
Australian air force servicemen launch a marker buoy from a C-130J Hercules aircraft flying above the southern Indian Ocean. Photo: AFP
Australian and US military planes flew back to base empty-handed last night after a fruitless search for debris from missing flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.
A day after satellite images showed "possible objects" from the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet more than 2,260 kilometres off the west coast of Australia, investigators were coming to terms with the logistical realities of searching one of the most remote stretches of ocean on the planet.
It is two weeks since the Boeing 777 with 239 passengers on board, 154 of them Chinese, vanished from radar screens over the South China Sea.
The clock is ticking on the 30-day period within which the flight's crucial black box must be found.
As an international armada of military and civilian vessels heads for the area, fears grew that by the time they get there the objects will be unrecoverable, having sunk or been swept away by powerful currents.
"The most sophisticated aircraft and vessels are heading in that direction [off the west coast of Australia]. Some assets have actually covered the area," Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said.
Search teams flying over the southern Indian Ocean were hampered by poor visibility and bad weather.
Two P-3 Orion aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force and the US P-8 Poseidon are among the aircraft leading the search of the potential wreckage site. One P-3 Orion from New Zealand and two more types of the same Orion from Japan have been deployed.
China reacted quickly to the report of suspected debris and extended its search efforts southward.
Four civilian rescue vessels and three naval ships near Singapore, all equipped with detection devices such as surface radar and sonar, had received instructions from Beijing and were steaming southward at full speed towards Australia, according to Xinhua.
Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon was preparing to set sail from Perth after having received orders to join the search in the southern Indian Ocean.
"Yes, it is a challenge but we are using every possible asset and equipment that is available to the world out there to locate the aircraft," Hishammuddin said.
Hishammuddin appealed to US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel last night for further unspecified specialist assets, including remotely operated vehicles for deep ocean salvage.
Hishammuddin said a request for a refuelling plane would be made to join the operation to keep the search aircraft in the air for as long as possible.
Officials in Kuala Lumpur toned town earlier assessments that the objects of interest in the southern Indian Ocean could lead to missing flight MH370.
"In the event we do not find the debris in the near future, I will reveal and inform the media what our plans are in the southern corridor," Hishammuddin said.
Although expectations were raised by the satellite images, neither of the search corridors have been narrowed. Malaysia said it was waiting for permission from Kazakhstan to use the nation as a second base for aircraft searching in the northern corridor.
"Obviously, the search has taken a global perspective," Hishammuddin added.
Mandy Zuo in Beijing and Angela Meng in Kuala Lumpur
A poem expressing hope at the hotel in Beijing where relatives are staying. Photo: Simon Song
Relatives of the Chinese passengers on missing flight MH370 vented almost two weeks of pent-up rage and frustration yesterday as they met the first high-level Malaysian delegation to visit Beijing since the flight vanished.
Top brass from the military and civilian wings of Malaysia's aviation industry arrived in the city with the aim of clearing up confusion but were met with a barrage of criticism. The family members slammed the group for its slowness in travelling to China to face them, and for the way they have handled the search for the missing flight.
Led by Kuala Lumpur's ambassador to Beijing, Datuk Iskandar Sarudin, the delegation included a lieutenant general in charge of flight operations for the Royal Malaysian Air Force, a colonel in the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, a Boeing 777 pilot and a Malaysia Airlines vice-president.
The delegation emphasised that finding the plane remained their first priority. They said there were many possible reasons for the airliner's disappearance, including a terrorist attack or hijacking, either of which might require information to be withheld to protect the safety of the passengers.
The distraught wife of a man who was returning home from work in Singapore on the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 said: "[The Malaysians] release one piece of news today, and then deny it tomorrow. My heart is going up and down … It's just like being tortured."
Two unnamed staff members of the Cyberview Spa & Resort hotel in Malaysia, where some of the Chinese family members were staying, said yesterday morning that Malaysia Airlines had booked 50 rooms for the relatives but that more than 40 were unoccupied because most of the relatives had refused to fly to Kuala Lumpur, believing the trip to be pointless.
Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, later told reporters in Kuala Lumpur the delegation had brought the authorities and families closer together.
"We had a very constructive and frank discussion" Hishammuddin said. "Although we answered most of the questions they raised, we could not answer them all."
Search and rescue operations in the southern Indian Ocean and in the flight corridor to the north continued yesterday following Australia's announcement on Thursday that satellite images showed what could be debris from the plane. So far, the objects shown in the satellite images have yet to be found.
"The southern corridor has always been a challenge," Hishammuddin said. "I will be seeking further assistance from the US secretary of defence tonight."
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Seargent Ben Herbert searches an area some 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth in the Indian Ocean this week. Photo: EPA
Malaysia on Friday asked the United States to provide undersea surveillance technology to help in the search for the wreckage of a missing airliner, Pentagon officials said.
The request came as a near two-week search failed to find any debris from the Boeing 777 that disappeared off the radar after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.
In a phone call to Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, Malaysia’s defence minister and acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein “requested that the US consider providing some undersea surveillance equipment,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.
Hagel assured his counterpart that he would “assess the availability and utility of military undersea technology for such a task and provide him an update in the very near future,” Kirby said in a statement.
Officials did not say precisely what equipment the Pentagon might provide but the US military has invested heavily in robotic technology designed for undersea surveillance against enemy submarines or torpedoes.
The Malaysian minister thanked Hagel for the US Navy’s assistance in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared with 239 passengers and crew in an unprecedented aviation mystery.
Two US Navy maritime surveillance planes, a P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon, have been taking part in the search.
The P-8 has flown with Australian aircraft in a search of the southern Indian Ocean, while the P-3 --- which had been combing an area in the Bay of Bengal -- is due to join the search in the southern zone, officials said.
A search effort on Friday of a remote stretch of Indian Ocean concluded “without any sightings,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said in a statement.
A family member of a passenger onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 cries at a briefing from Malaysian government in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
Malaysia’s missing-plane crisis has exposed the shortcomings of a ruling regime already wrestling with a rapidly shrinking support base, fierce racial divisions and international criticism of its tough handling of political opponents.
The same government has ruled since Malaysia’s birth in 1957, and political observers said its much-criticised response to the jet drama is symptomatic of years of institutional atrophy under an ethnic Malay elite known for cronyism.
Analysts said rancour over the still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and its 239 people, two-thirds of whom were Chinese, could also complicate plans to draw closer to China -- Malaysia’s biggest trading partner and a growing source of tourist revenue.
“The general level of Malaysian political performance, competence and adequacy has plummeted,” said Clive Kessler, a Malaysia politics researcher at the University of New South Wales, who cites a “long, slow, protracted crisis of governance” over the past decade.
Experts stress that any country would struggle to cope with the plane’s baffling disappearance on March 8, and Malaysia denies mishandling it.
But allegations of incompetence and evasiveness have clearly unsettled the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) government.
Chinese relatives of passengers from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leave the lounge in the Metro Park Lido Hotel, after a meeting with Malaysian officials in Beijing on March 21. Photo: AFP
Not used to being challenged
Barisan is unused to being challenged by Malaysia’s meek, state-dominated press and has basked in decades of admiration of Malaysia as an economically successful melting pot, despite longstanding criticism over policies that discriminate against non-Malay minorities.
But ashen-faced officials have been subjected to daily grillings by combative foreign media in daily briefings in sometimes tense scenes beamed live in Malaysia and around the world.
“This is not a good look for Malaysia. I do think that the Barisan government has done some serious damage to its international reputation,” said Michael Barr, an Asian politics expert at Australia’s Flinders University.
The affair also has trained attention on Barisan’s bruising political tactics, particularly its treatment of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
Anwar, who accuses the government of hurling false criminal charges against him in a bid to halt the stunning recent successes of his opposition alliance, was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to five years in jail just hours before MH370 took off.
The verdict, denounced by rights groups and questioned by Washington, was dragged into the MH370 media glare after it was revealed that the flight’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a member of Anwar’s political party.
“With an international audience watching, this is showing that what (Malaysia’s government) thinks is acceptable here, is not at all tolerable by international standards,” said Bridget Welsh, a Malaysia politics analyst at Singapore Management University.
Barisan is routinely rapped by anti-graft groups for widespread corruption and cronyism -- Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the government’s face on MH370, is the cousin of Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Even China’s opaque Communist Party leadership has criticised Malaysia’s perceived lack of transparency, while Chinese relatives of passengers angrily allege a cover-up.
Pragmatic Beijing is unlikely to upset mutually beneficial trade links, but the plane drama will certainly cause economic worry in Malaysia, said Welsh.
Exports to China have become critical to maintaining the growth Barisan banks on for support.
Bilateral trade has soared - up 11.8 per cent last year to US$106 billion, according to Chinese figures. Najib and China’s President Xi Jinping last year pledged still-cosier ties and targeted US$160 billion in trade by 2017.
The flow of Chinese tourists to Malaysia also has accelerated, hitting 1.8 million last year, up 15 per cent on-year, behind only Singaporean and Indonesian visitors.
A Chinese relative of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane cries as she holds a banner in front of journalists reading 'We are against the Malaysian government for hiding the truth and delaying the rescue. Release our families unconditionally!" at a hotel in Sepang on March 21. Photo: AP
Rebuilding credibility
“This will require a significant effort to rebuild Malaysia’s credibility abroad,” Welsh said of the potential economic impact.
“Once you lose it, it takes time to win back.”
The crisis comes at a bad time for the mild-mannered Najib, who launched a reform drive three years ago in a failed bid to shore up voter support. That has been abandoned under pressure from conservatives in his ruling party, and Najib appears weakened.
Malaysian voters have deserted Barisan at an accelerating pace over corruption, rule of law concerns, and a sense of drift.
Anwar’s opposition won more votes than Barisan in May last year elections but the ruling coalition retained parliament thanks to seat allocations that favour its rural Malay base.
In particular, Malaysia’s sizable Chinese community - whose industriousness is a critical component of growth - increasingly chafe under a decades-old system of preferences for Malays.
Racial tensions also have flared in recent months over disputes between the Muslim majority and Christian minority.
Analysts said Barisan could turn things around by successfully appealing to national unity amid the crisis - especially if the plane is found.
Hishammuddin outlined that hope Friday, saying the MH370 situation “cuts across race, cuts across religion and now it cuts across boundaries amongst Malaysians.”
A relative of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370, protests after Malaysian government representatives leave after a briefing in Beijing on Saturday. Photo: AP
Police were forced to intervene on Saturday as relatives of Chinese passengers aboard vanished Flight MH370 rushed towards Malaysian officials at a Beijing hotel, demanding answers over the fate of their loved ones.
The confrontation at the Lido Hotel came as the search for the missing jet entered its third week, with many clinging to the hope that family members might still be alive and alleging Malaysian involvement in a cover-up.
A total of 153 Chinese were on board the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from civilian radar screens on March 8, nearly an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.
“Government of Malaysia, tell us the truth! Give us back our loved ones!” shouted audience members at Saturday’s briefing at the hotel attended by government officials. The hotel has hosted daily briefings for relatives from representatives of the airline.
A relative of Chinese passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370 cries as others protest after a briefing by Malaysian government representatives at a hotel in Beijing on Saturday. Photo: AP
“The Malaysian government is deceiving us. They don’t dare to face us. The Malaysian government are the biggest murderers,” a relative in the audience shouted, even though there is no evidence to suggest a government conspiracy.
As anger in the hall mounted, some relatives rushed towards the Malaysian officials but police intervened and the officials left the room.
“We can’t bear it any longer,” one woman said. “They’re offering us compensation, but we’ve lost our entire families. This is China. They can’t just tell us to come or go as they please. We’re going to wait here. If they don’t come, we’re not leaving.”
Dozens of countries have been involved in the search for the missing plane but the lack of firm answers from airline officials has undermined the relatives’ confidence in the hunt for the jet.
On Friday, a first meeting was organised between the passengers’ families and Malaysian government officials. That meeting also resulted in heated exchanges, boos and eruptions of anger.
A Chinese woman who is a relative of a passenger from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, with her three-year-old daughter and another family member as they arrive at Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on Saturday for a meeting with Malaysian officials. Photo: AFP
Six planes, including four Orion anti-submarine aircraft packed with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, joined the search for debris from the aircraft over a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean, 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth on Saturday.
Chinese, British and Australian naval ships were all steaming to the same area where two floating objects - possibly plane wreckage - were picked out on grainy satellite pictures.
UPDATE 1 - U.S. may give sonar gear to Malaysia for plane search
Fri Mar 21, 2014 5:47pm EDT
(New throughout, adds Malaysian request for undersea surveillance equipment)
By Phil Stewart and David Alexander
(Reuters) - The Pentagon is weighing a request from Malaysia for sonar equipment to bolster the so-far frustrated search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, as concerns grow that any debris may have sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Malaysia's Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein asked for undersea surveillance equipment in a phone call with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, as the Pentagon tallied $2.5 million in costs so far in the nearly two-week-old search.
"No specific request was made for any particular type. It was just a general request for us to help them locate the wreckage and/or the black box," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told Reuters on Friday.
"The Secretary said he would consider the request, that he would examine whether we had anything that was both available and potentially helpful and that he would get back to the minister in the very near future."
The U.S. Navy has a variety of active and passive sonar systems, some of which search the ocean for objects by emitting sound "pings" and monitoring the echoes that bounce back and others that listen for sound like an undersea microphone.
One system, called a "Towed Pinger Locator", is towed behind ships and is used to listen for downed Navy and commercial aircraft at depths of up to 20,000 feet (6000 meters), according to the U.S. Navy's website.
The U.S. military loaned this technology to France during its two-year effort to locate the black box from an Air France jetliner that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009.
The P-8 and P-3 spy planes, which the United States is already deploying in the Malaysian jetliner search, also carry "sonobuoys" that can be dropped into the sea and use sonar signals to search the waters below.
"Sound actually travels a long distance under water, depending on the conditions," Kirby said.
"Temperature, current, the underwater topography, all of these things change the way sound travels underwater. But sound can travel a long, long way."
One big question will be where to drop any sonar equipment.
Investigators suspect Flight MH370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing shortly after midnight on March 8, was deliberately diverted thousands of miles from its scheduled path. They say they are focusing on hijacking or sabotage but have not ruled out technical problems.
There has been no confirmed sign of wreckage so far and Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss cautioned on Friday that anything once floating "may have slipped to the bottom."
Hishammuddin, who is also acting transport minister, has acknowledged that the clock was ticking.
The plane's "black box" voice and data recorder only transmits an electronic signal for about 30 days before its battery dies, after which it will be far more difficult to locate.
"We've got three more weeks to find those pingers on the black boxes -- or else this plane may never be found," said Alan Diehl, who spent 40 years investigating aircraft accidents for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. military.
He said the Pentagon should send submarines and more aircraft.
In its first disclosure of the cost of the U.S. search, the Pentagon estimated about $2.5 million had been spent so far. It added the U.S. Defense Department had set aside about $4 million -- enough to cover operations through early April. (Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alistair Bell and David Gregorio)
The Associated Press
on March 22, 2014 at 12:03 PM
KUALA LUMPUR — A satellite image released by China on Saturday offered the latest sign that wreckage from a Malaysia Airlines plane lost for more than two weeks could be in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean where planes and ships have been searching for three days.
The image, showing an object 72 feet by 43 feet, was taken around noon Tuesday. The image location was about 75 miles south of where an Australian satellite viewed two objects two days earlier. The larger object was about as long as the one the Chinese satellite detected.
"The news that I just received is that the Chinese ambassador received a satellite image of a floating object in the southern corridor and they will be sending ships to verify," Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters today.
Australian officials said the location was within the 14,000-square-mile area they searched today, but the object was not found. Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Andrea Hayward-Maher said she did not know whether the precise coordinates of the location had been searched, but added that coordinators will use the information to refine the search area.
The authority, which is overseeing the search in the region, said a civil aircraft reported seeing a number of small objects in the search area, including a wooden pallet, but a New Zealand military plane diverted to the location found only clumps of seaweed. The agency said in a statement that searchers would keep trying to determine whether the objects are related to the lost plane.
The latest satellite image is another clue in the baffling search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which dropped off air traffic control screens March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.
After about a week of confusion, Malaysian authorities said pings sent by the Boeing 777-200 for several hours after it disappeared indicated that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor that stretches toward Antarctica.
The discovery of the two objects by the Australian satellite led several countries to send planes and ships to a stretch of the Indian Ocean about 1,550 miles southwest of Australia. But three days of searching have produced no confirmed signs of the plane.
One of the objects spotted in the earlier satellite imagery was described as almost 80 feet in length and the other was 15 feet. The Boeing 777-200 is about 64 meters (209 feet) long with a wingspan of 199 feet and a fuselage about 20 feet in diameter, according to Boeing's website.
In a statement on its website announcing China's find, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense did not explain why it took four days to release the information. But there was a similar delay in the release of the Australian satellite images because experts needed time to examine them.
Two military planes from China arrived today in Perth to join Australian, New Zealand and U.S. aircraft in the search. Japanese planes will arrive Sunday and ships were in the area or on their way.
Even if both satellites detected the same object, it may be unrelated to the plane. One possibility is that it could have fallen off a cargo vessel.
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the currents in the area typically move at about one yard per second but can sometimes move faster.
Based on the typical speed, a current could theoretically move a floating object about 107 miles in two days.
Warren Truss, Australia's acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is abroad, said before the new satellite data was announced that a complete search could take a long time.
"It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search until we're absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile — and that day is not in sight," he said.
"If there's something there to be found, I'm confident that this search effort will locate it," Truss said from the base near Perth that is serving as a staging area for search aircraft.
Aircraft involved in the search include two ultra-long-range commercial jets and four P3 Orions, the maritime safety authority said.
Because the search area is a four-hour flight from land, the Orions can search for about only two hours before they must fly back. The commercial jets can stay for five hours before heading back to the base.
Two merchant ships were in the area, and the HMAS Success, a navy supply ship, had also joined the search.
Hishammuddin, the Malaysian defense minister, said conditions in the southern corridor were challenging.
The area where the objects were identified by the Australian authorities is marked by strong currents and rough seas, and the ocean depth varies between 3,770 feet and 23,000 feet. In addition, Hishammuddin said a low-level warning had been declared for Tropical Cyclone Gillian, although that was north of Australia and closer to Indonesia.
The Chinese planes that arrived in Perth on Saturday were expected to begin searching on Sunday. A small flotilla of ships from China will also join the hunt, along with a refueling vessel that will allow ships to stay in the search area for a long time, Truss said.
The missing plane, which had been bound for Beijing, carried 153 Chinese passengers. In the Chinese capital on Saturday, relatives of the passengers rose up in anger at the end of a brief meeting with Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian government officials.
"You can't leave here! We want to know what the reality is!" they shouted in frustration over what they saw as officials' refusal to answer questions. The relatives gave reporters a statement saying they believe they have been "strung along, kept in the dark and lied to by the Malaysian government."
Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.
Police are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.
Malaysia asked the U.S. for undersea surveillance equipment to help in the search, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel promised to assess the availability of the technology and its usefulness in the search, Kirby said. The Pentagon says it has spent $2.5 million to operate ships and aircraft in the search and has budgeted another $1.5 million for the efforts.
By Siva Govindasamy and Niluksi Koswanage
KUALA LUMPUR Sat Mar 22, 2014 12:46pm EDT
A screen shows the questions from family members of passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 after a routine briefing.
(Reuters) - India has told Malaysia it has found no evidence that a missing Malaysia Airlines jet with 239 people on board flew through its airspace, investigators said on Saturday.
The first notification that India and a number of other nations on a northern search corridor have come up empty-handed leaves the two-week-old investigation dependent on increasingly fragile hopes that an object spotted in the southern Indian Ocean comes from Flight MH370.
China and Pakistan are also among countries that have found no trace of the jet in their airspace, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Hishammuddin, who is running the investigation as acting transport minister, said earlier that after two days without confirmation of debris in the south, his "biggest concern" was that the search for the missing plane would have to revert to focusing once again on both vast search corridors running north and south.
The response from India is crucial because any radar data from that country could help identify whether the jet turned north or south after disappearing on March 8, but the issue is also sensitive because of the presence of military radar.
Sources familiar with the situation in both countries said India had formally told Malaysia that it had checked for any sign of the jet having touched its airspace and found nothing of significance, in response to Kuala Lumpur's diplomatic request.
The plane's last confirmed position, picked up by Malaysian military radar, was at 2:15 a.m. Malaysia time (1815 GMT March 7) about 200 nautical miles northwest of Malaysia's Penang island, roughly an hour after it diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Officials close to the investigation said available information showed the plane may have passed close to Port Blair, the capital of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 550 miles further northwest along an established commercial flying route.
"It went very near Port Blair, that much we understand from information available," said a senior military official with knowledge of the investigation. "It had gone into Indian airspace and then it was not clear where the plane went after Port Blair."
An Indian Defense Ministry spokesman declined to comment on whether the aircraft had flown over Port Blair.
India has said it is possible that the military radars were switched off as it operates on an "as required" basis in that area.
A reluctance to share sensitive military radar data in a region where countries are wary of each other has hampered investigators' attempts to solve the baffling disappearance, officials have said.
(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, Editing by Tim Hepher and Nick Macfie)
Hishammuddin Hussein is faced by a media storm. Photo: AFP
If - and it's a big if - the latest images from a Chinese satellite turn out to be wreckage from flight MH370, it won't mark the end of the mystery, just a cruel new twist to a story which has been short on facts and long on theories.
That a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER aircraft bound for Beijing with 239 people on board vanished from sight over the South China Sea in the early hours of March 8 is indisputable. But the absence of facts has left a void readily filled with rumour, claim and wild speculation.
It seems inconceivable in a world which boasts satellites capable of reading vehicle license plates that a passenger jet can simply disappear.
In what has often seemed a desperate and confused search for the truth, every passenger, crew member and person with a direct connection to the flight has come under scrutiny, spawning an abundance of theories, from the wildly conspiratorial political revenge hijacking and mistaken shooting down of the plane, to the obvious terrorist outrage explanation and the more prosaic technical malfunction.
In fact, much of the last 15 days has been more about debunking theories and correcting misinformation than the production of cold, hard, facts.
Following the early disclosure that two passengers used stolen passports to board the plane, officials suspected a terrorist attack until the two Iranian men were found to have no known terror links. The two Iranians were most likely illegal immigrants.
Not long after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that new evidence of the airliner's movements pointed to a deliberate diversion of the plane, authorities raided the homes of 53-year-old captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and 27-year-old first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid and seized a flight simulator that Zaharie built which contained files of landing locations in the Indian Ocean.
Mohammed Khairul Amri Selamat, an aviation engineer on the flight, also came under suspicion. Khairul's father has denied any possibility his son is linked to the plane's disappearance. His employers said he specialised in business jets, and would not have had the technical skills to divert a commercial aircraft.
Again, authorities have not completely ruled out hijacking, but so far, no organisation has claimed responsibility.
The main focus, according to Malaysian acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein, has been to reduce the area of search. But the area has expanded from the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, first to the Strait of Malacca, then to the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean, and northwards to Kazakhstan - roughly one tenth of the planet.
Laboratory analysis of oil slicks found off the coast of Malaysia on March 8 came back negative; Chinese satellite imagery on March 12 of possible debris between Malaysia and Vietnam was also a false alarm; and the two objects suspected to be linked to MH370, also from satellite imaging, announced by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott have yet to be found after three days of searching.
Yesterday Hishammuddin relayed a message delivered to him in the daily press briefing that Chinese satellites had picked up a large object near the southern Indian Ocean. It is not known if it is one of the objects announced by the Australian prime minister.
Malaysian officials maintain that as long as the plane is not found in pieces, there is still hope for the families of passengers. The families are also hopeful that as long as no bodies are found, their loved ones may still be alive.
If MH370 were found with no survivors, it would become the deadliest commercial aircraft accident in 10 years.
MARCH 8, 7.24am: Malaysia Airlines confirms a jet lost contact with air traffic control at 2.40am after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
10.30am: Families waiting at Beijing airport are told passengers will not arrive.
NIGHT: International rescue effort is under way. Two passengers used passports - one Austrian, one Italian - reported stolen in Thailand. Airline does not rule out terrorism.
MARCH 9, 2am: Airline says it last heard from flight MH370 at 1.30am, not 2.40am.
NOON: Hong Kong Immigration Department confirms 45-year-old local woman was on board.
MARCH 10: The largest rescue flotilla in Chinese naval history - four warships and five civilian and commercial vessels - speeds overnight to waters between Malaysia and Vietnam. Ten Chinese satellites join hunt.
NIGHT: Airline announces it will give 31,000 yuan (HK$39,200) to relatives of each passenger as a special condolence payment.
MARCH 11: Two Malaysian military officials say jet flew for an hour off flight course and at a lower altitude after vanishing from civil aviation radar. Interpol identifies two Iranians as holders of stolen passports.
MARCH 12: Beijing slams Malaysia's "pretty chaotic" and conflicting information as Kuala Lumpur officials fail to pinpoint the plane's last known whereabouts.
MARCH 13: Malaysian military confirms spotting unidentified aircraft on its radar about 1 hour and 20 minutes after MH370's signal went cold. Airline says it has not been determined if that was the missing jet.
MARCH 14: Investigators are increasingly certain the jet turned back across the Malay Peninsula after losing communication. International search expands westwards towards Indian Ocean.
MARCH 15: Search narrows to two air corridors as Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirms plane kept flying after it "vanished". Officials also confirm the jet's disappearance was a "deliberate act".
MARCH 16: Search shifts to Indian Ocean with satellite data showing the plane flew for seven hours after it lost contact. Pilot's background under renewed scrutiny after a flight simulator is found at his home.
MARCH 17: Possible new timeline of when plane shut off its communication systems as airline reveals last words from cockpit, spoken by co-pilot, were: "All right, good night". A flight engineer who was a passenger comes under investigation.
MARCH 18: Disappearance is longest in modern aviation history. US officials confirm they are working closely with the Malaysian government. Relatives of passengers threaten hunger strike due to lack of information; Beijing rules out sabotage by its nationals.
MARCH 19: Authorities in the Maldives investigate reports that residents saw a low-flying jet. Three million people join crowd-sourcing satellite hunt as search area expands to 26 countries.
MARCH 20: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott confirms two large pieces of possible wreckage spotted in the southern Indian Ocean. Beijing says plane did not enter Chinese territory, according to its data.
MARCH 21: Bad weather hampers search efforts more than 2,000 kilometres off west coast of Australia.
MARCH 22: Malaysian authorities say a transcript of the final 54 minutes of cockpit communication published by The Daily Telegraph in Britain is inaccurate. Chinese authorities say their satellites spotted a large object in the southern Indian Ocean.
Nothing found on MH370 pilot's flight simulator: report
Yahoo! and agencies March 23, 2014, 8:35 am
Australia to continue plane search (clone 1395345572)
Forensic experts examining the home flight simulator of Malaysia Airlines pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah have found nothing suspicious, according to police sources quoted by Fairfax Media.
A report from the publisher's Malaysia correspondent said the failure to uncover any suspicious recordings collapsed the only significant lead local investigators had been pursuing with regard to the missing flight MH370.
Malaysia had asked the FBI to help recover data deleted from a flight simulator in the home of Zaharie, a US official told AFP on Wednesday.
Malaysia's defense minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said that he believed Zaharie was innocent until proven guilty, and that family members of the missing pilot were contributing to the investigation.
'Leaked' transcript inaccurate: Malaysia
Malaysian authorities say a cockpit transcript released by UK media is inaccurate.
"The transcript is invalid and inaccurate," Department of Civil Aviation Director-General Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told the New Straits Times. "I have to inform that the transcript between the tower and the aircraft is not accurate," he repeated.
Azharuddin refused to comment on which parts of the transcript were not accurate, telling the paper that "the transcript by standard procedure cannot be publicly released."
A UK report said the potentially leaked transcript had been translated from a Mandarin Chinese version.
According to the Telegraph, the transcript of the last 54 minutes of conversations between the co-pilot, the control tower and other air traffic authorities, included a point at which investigators believe the plane was sabotaged.
Experts say the messages and conversation appeared "perfectly routine" but pointed out that two features were potentially odd.
At 1:07am, a message from the cockpit told authorities that the plane was flying at 35,000ft. This raised some eyebrows as it repeated a message delivered only six minutes earlier.
Adding to the suspicion of crew intervention, it happened just moments before the plane's ACARS signalling device sent its final message before being disabled.
The Telegraph (UK) claimed the final communications within the cockpit of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had been revealed. Photo: AP.
Secondly, it appears that the loss of communication and subsequent change of MH370's direction occurred at the point where the air traffic control in Kuala Lumpur were to handover to those in Ho Chi Minh City.
"If I was going to steal the aeroplane, that would be the point I would do it," said Stephen Buzdygan, a former British Airways pilot.
"There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers. It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground."
The development was reported in London's Telegraph, which claimed at that time to have received no confirmation from authorities.
The Daily Telegraph has repeatedly asked Malaysia Airlines, Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority and the office of Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, to confirm the communications record; only the prime minister's office responded, saying it would not release this data.
No sight of potential MH370 debris in southern Indian Ocean
Spotter planes spent a second fruitless day scouring a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean for wreckage from a Malaysian jet, as Chinese relatives of the missing passengers clashed with Malaysian officials.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has tasked three RAAF P3 Orion aircraft, a New Zealand P3 RAAF Orion aircraft and two ultra long range commercial jets to search a 36,000 square kilometre area about 2500 kilometres south-west of Perth today.
Australian and US military aircraft usually used for anti-submarine operations on Friday criss-crossed the isolated search area 2500 kilometres southwest of Perth, looking for two floating objects that had shown up on grainy satellite photos taken several days before.
After two weeks of false leads, Australia revived the investigation on the mysterious disappearance of flight MH370 when it announced the detection of two "objects" in the southern Indian Ocean, some 2500 kilometres southwest of Perth in western Australia.
Although the images were too indistinct to confirm as debris from Flight MH370, Australian and Malaysian officials said they represented the most "credible" leads to date in the hunt for the plane and its 239 passengers and crew.
Friday's search concluded "without any sightings", the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said in a statement.
A Royal Australian Air Force plane deployed to search part of the Indian Ocean for any potential signs of the missing MH370 passenger jet returned to Perth without spotting any debris. Photo: Reuters.
The planes flew low under the cloud cover rather than rely on radar, after poor weather the day before hampered the search.
"We replanned the search to be visual, so aircraft flying relatively low, with very highly skilled observers looking out of the windows," said AMSA official John Young.
"This means aircraft operating more closely together and we will need more aircraft for this task."
A crew member on board an Australian AP-3C Orion takes part in the search for the missing MH370 passenger jet. Photo: Department of Defence.
Friday's aerial contingent comprised three Australian air force P-3 Orions, a US Navy P-8 Poseidon and a civil Bombardier Global Express jet.
The distance from the west coast of Australia allows the planes only about two hours of actual search time before they must turn around with enough fuel to get back to Perth.
Two merchant ships were helping with the search, but Australia's HMAS Success, which is capable of retrieving any wreckage, was still days away.
"This is going to be a long haul," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a daily press briefing in Kuala Lumpur.
A map shows the search areas for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photo: AP.
Malaysia has been criticised for its handling of the crisis, especially by Chinese relatives who have accused authorities and the flag-carrier airline of providing insufficient or misleading information.
A delegation of Malaysian government and military officials flew to Beijing for what turned out to be a bad-tempered meeting with relatives.
The event began with family members yelling at delegates to stand up when they were being introduced.
"You have wasted so much time," shouted one.
A relative of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 walks out of a hotel ballroom after attending a news briefing organised by the airlines' officials in Beijing. Photo: AP.
The nature of the events that diverted MH370 from its intended flight path on March 8 remain shrouded in mystery, although Malaysian investigators have stuck to their assumption that it was the result of a "deliberate action" by someone on board.
Three scenarios have gained particular attention: hijacking, pilot sabotage, and a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated the flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
If the objects in the remote southern Indian Ocean are shown to have come from MH370, some analysts believe the hijacking theory will lose ground.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority Search and Rescue Officers coordinate the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from the Rescue Coordination Centre in Canberra. Photo: Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
The often storm-swept area is far from recognised shipping lanes and the satellite images were taken on March 16, meaning the objects would have been drifting for days in a volatile maritime region.
If debris is found, the mammoth task remains of locating the "black box" flight data recorder, which offers the best chance of peeling back the layers of confusion and mystery surrounding MH370.
The three Australian P3 Orions joined by a high-tech US Navy P8 Poseidon aircraft and a civilian Bombardier Global Express jet to search the 23,000 square km (8,900 sq mile) zone on Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.
A Norwegian merchant ship that had been diverted to the area on Thursday was still searching there and another vessel would arrive later on Friday.
China is now sending three warships to join the search for possible pieces of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean, the government said Friday.
The Hoegh St Petersburg car carrier has reached the area in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia where two floating objects, suspected to be debris from the missing Malaysian jetliner, were spotted, the ship's owner said on March 20, 2014. Photo: Reuters.
The ships are en route to the area where a satellite image showed two large objects floating about 2300 kilometres west of Australia, the National Maritime Search and Rescue Centre said Friday.
It gave no indication when they might arrive at the remote site, but earlier Chinese news reports said the ships — the Kunlunshan, the Haikou and the Qiandaohu — were searching near the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
The centre said a fourth Chinese vessel, the icebreaker Snow Dragon, is in the western Australian port of Perth following a trip to Antarctica and might join the search.
The search comes as one aviation expert said that if the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean it may never be found.
Rémi Jouty, head of the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses, said that there would be much more work involved in an undersea search if objects found by satellites turned out to be from the missing plane.
“The only thing I can say is it will be most difficult and the recovery [of the wreckage on the seabed] is not guaranteed,” Mr Jouty told the Financial Times.
Four Australian aircraft completed the search over the 23,000 square kilometre area south-west of Perth, returning with no leads.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the satellite images of the objects are credible but they may not be from the plane.
"It is a very long journey to the site and unfortunately, aircraft can only have one or two hours over the search area before they need to return to the mainland for fuel," Warren Truss, who is currently Australia's acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, told the ABC. He said that weather conditions in the area were poor and may get worse.
"And so clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search. Weather conditions are not particularly good and risk that they may deteriorate," Truss said.
A RAAF C-130J Hercules assists with the search off WA. Picture: Michael Wilson/The West Australian
"Search operations in the Southern Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft will continue today in the Australian Search and Rescue Region," AMSA said in a statement.
"Today’s search will utilise four military aircraft, including two RAAF Orions, tasked by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to search a 23,000 kilometre area, about 2500 kilometres south-west of Perth.
"A merchant ship remains in the search area. Another merchant ship is en route to the area and is expected to arrive tonight.
"A total of six merchant ships have assisted in the search since a shipping broadcast was issued by AMSA on Monday night.
"The current search area has been identified based on satellite data imagery from the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) provided to AMSA on Thursday morning.
An updated satellite image has been provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Photo: AMSA
"Analysis of the imagery by AGO identified two objects possibly relating to the missing aircraft. The images have been assessed as being credible but it is possible they do not relate to the search for MH370.
"The Royal Australian Navy HMAS Success is also en route to the search area and is due in the area on 22 March."
AMSA said that there had been no reported sightings of wreckage yet.
"It would be very nice if you could see a whole wing floating there, then you could say, 'OK that's an airplane,'" said Sean O'Connor, an imagery analyst with IHS Jane's. In the case of these satellite images, "you can't tell what it is" so closer examination is critical.
The world will continue to look to Australia for new information about two objects in the southern Indian Ocean possibly linked to a missing jet. Photo: Department of Defence.
Another analyst said the debris is most likely not pieces of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There have been several false leads since the Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 above the Gulf of Thailand en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"The chances of it being debris from the airplane are probably small, and the chances of it being debris from other shipping are probably large," said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Speaking to reporters in Papua New Guinea, Mr Abbott defended announcing the possible link to the plane in parliament.
He said it was the most "serious" lead so far in the search.
"We don't know what that satellite saw until we get much closer look at it, but this is the most tangible clue in what's been an utterly baffling mystery," Mr Abbott said on Thursday night.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tells parliament in Canberra that satellite imagery has found two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photo: ABC.
Defence Minister David Johnston was also cautious of raising any false hopes.
"We are several days away from having an idea of the credibility and veracity of this (satellite) report," Senator Johnston told ABC TV.
The Australian Navy ship HMAS Success is en route to aid in the search when it recommences at first light.
New phase
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister, says that if the objects in the South Indian Ocean are confirmed to be from the missing Boeing 777-200, a new phase of the search will focus on an international operation to find the black box recorder.
He said that the black box is the vital clue in establishing exactly what happened to the MH370.
Two objects in the southern Indian Ocean remain the target for Australian authorities as the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues on Friday. Photo: Department of Defence.
The black box of an aircraft records extensive data from the flight, including engine information, and changes to a plane's controls, altitude and oxygen levels. More importantly, it records conversations from within the cockpit, which will prove crucial to unlocking the mystery of the missing MH370.
"For families around the world, the one piece of information they want most is the information we just don’t have: the location of MH370," Hussein told a press conference
"Our primary focus has always been to find the aircraft. And with every passing day, our efforts have intensified.
"Yesterday I said that we wanted to reduce the area of the search. We now have a credible lead. There remains much work to be done to deploy the assets. This work will continue overnight."
Liu Guiqui is pictured during the March 19 press conference where she protested at the lack of information on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. Photo: EPA
The mother of a passenger on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has denied she was mistreated by Malaysian police before an emotionally-charged press conference.
Liu Guiqui, who became the face of anguish and anger on behalf of families with loved ones on board the vanished flight when she was pictured at a press conference protesting against the handling of the case, claimed airline authorities left her in the dark when they told her the plane carrying her son Li Le “never took off” from Kuala Lumpur.
Speaking for the first time since the press conference, Liu denied she was mistreated by police at the press conference, saying that in fact they were there to stop her panicking and shield her from the media.
The conduct of the security personnel is the focus of an investigation launched by the Malaysian government looking at what happened after Liu was forcibly removed.
Liu told state-run CCTV she had travelled to Kuala Lumpur airport for answers after learning that the flight was missing. She went to the press conference to protest, and to ask the Malaysian politicians what happened to her son.
While there, along with a handful of family members, she evaded a wall of security to unfurl a banner: "We protest against the Malaysian government withholding information and holding up search efforts."
"Where are my sons, I need to know where they are," she wailed during the March 19 press conference. "Not one Malaysian official has said one comforting word to us.
“How is it at this stage we have no information?” she asked, explaining that she can’t understand why there has been no news.
Ms Liu spoke of her confusion that her son’s plane never arrived in Beijing on March 8. She said Malaysia Airlines told her that the “plane never took off”.
At home, she watched news reports that confirmed Li’s plane was missing. She shook her head in disbelief during the interview, her bewilderment turning to heartbreak as she realised it was not a mistake.
“I kept telling myself my son was going to be alright,” she said.
Liu explained she flew to Kuala Lumpur to be the first person he greeted off the plane – yet, 16 days into the search, investigators have no idea what happened to the plane, let alone the missing 239 passengers and crew.
The middle-aged mother described her son as a “kind-hearted, good person” who is “loyal… [and] treats everyone with respect.”
Li is a father-of-one. Liu said the family was trying to shield her daughter from the potentially tragic news.
Liu now doesn’t believe Malaysia’s handling of the case has been bad. But she said all she wanted was “my son to return”.
The satellite image released by China yesterday showing suspected debris in the southern corridor of the intensified search area in the Indian Ocean. Photo: SCMP
New French satellite images show possible debris from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 deep in the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysia said on Sunday, adding to growing signs that the plane may have gone down in remote seas off Australia.
The latest lead comes as the international search for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 entered its third week, with still no confirmed trace of the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 people on board.
France is the third country to announce a sighting of debris, with Australia and China both having earlier released images showing objects floating in the Indian Ocean.
"This morning, Malaysia received new satellite images from the French authorities," Malaysia’s transport ministry said in a statement. "Malaysia immediately relayed these
images to the Australian rescue co-ordination centre."
The ministry did not give any other details on the satellite images.
The development will further cement belief that the airliner, carrying 239 passengers and crew, crashed into the ocean after it disappeared from radar on March 8.
A massive search of the southern corridor, led by Australia with the assistance of China, Japan and the US, has been under way for the last four days.
It also emerged on Sunday that, in a telephone conversation with Australian Chief of Defence Force David Hurley, China's PLA chief of staff Fang Fenghui called for both sides to step up cooperation in the search.
Search times were extended into Sunday late evening as weather conditions improved, to locate possible wreckage – linked or not – to the missing Malaysia Airlines jet in the remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean.
A growing international fleet of aircraft and vessels in an Australia-led Indian Ocean surveillance mission resumed the search on day four in a concentrated area some 2,300 kilometres west of Perth.
Eight aircraft are searching today: four civil jets and four military aircraft are involved in visual operations.
Officials in the state capital Canberra said a sighting by a team member of a wooden pallet was a “possible lead”.
Photo released by Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) shows satellite image of objects that may be possible debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean. Photo: Xinhua
Mike Barton, a rescue coordinator for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), said on Sunday that search teams spotted the wooden pallet “and a number of other items… [including] strapping belts of different lengths.”
“But we have to be very certain that this is a pallet because pallets are used in the shipping industry as well,” Barton said.
It is hoped that other objects of interest identified by Chinese satellites on Saturday can be ruled out or provide clues to investigators still short of answers to what happened to the Boeing 777, and to search teams anxious to narrow search areas and eventually recover flight MH370’s black box voice and flight data recorder.
More than two weeks after the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared, the new image shows an object 120 kilometres southwest of where suspected wreckage was previously spotted.
A relative of Chinese passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370 cries as others protest after a briefing by Malaysian government representatives at a hotel in Beijing, China. Photo: AP
AMSA’s Barton said it had been able to search a smaller “defined area” based on two previous satellite images released on Friday showing possible objects in the immediate vicinity.
Aircraft have so far not been able to detect the objects from the fresh sighting. “You only have to be off a few hundred metres in a fast travelling aircraft,” Barton said.
It had been feared that Tropical Cyclone Gillian, due in the area, would make operations “very challenging” for ships, with rough seas and strong currents.
A man covers his face as he walks out from a room reserved for relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines, MH370, in Beijing, China. Photo: AP
But on Sunday afternoon conditions looked to be improving, although not without bringing new challenges.
“Actually determining what it is from an aircraft at a lot lower altitude looking into the sun, or with the haze, is proving difficult to relocate these items,” Barton added.
Separately, Nasa will reposition satellites to the areas in the southern Indian Ocean to speed-up investigations in the area.
Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, said: “I hope…we are able to conclusively say once and for all that we are close to finding where this plane may be located and there can be some kind of closure for families.”
However, Malaysian authorities have asked the US for help with underwater surveillance.
In a phone call to defence secretary Chuck Hagel, Malaysia’s defence minister and acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein “requested that the US consider providing some undersea surveillance equipment”, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.
Hagel assured his counterpart that he would “assess the availability and utility of military undersea technology for such a task and provide him an update in the very near future”, Kirby said in a statement.
Earlier, Australia’s Maritime Search Agency released a statement saying it was taking “drift modelling” into account in the resumed search for the objects spotted by satellites.
Yesterday, China provided a satellite image to Australia possibly showing a 22.5 metre floating object in the southern Indian Ocean. AMSA plotted the position and it fell within yesterday’s search area. The object was not sighted during yesterday’s search.
The RNZAF P3 Orion dropped a datum marker buoy to track the movement of the material. Further attempts were made today to establish whether the objects sighted are related to MH370.
Yesterday, China provided a satellite image to Australia possibly showing a 22.5 metre floating object in the southern Indian Ocean. AMSA plotted the position and it fell within yesterday’s search area. The object was not sighted during yesterday’s search.
AMSA has used this information in the development of the search area, taking drift modelling into account."
Missing plane timeline: The search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
Mar 23, 2014 15:52
By Jessica Best
A fortnight after the plane carrying 239 people went missing, we look back at major developments in one of the most complex mysteries the aviation world has ever known
Today marks two weeks since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared without trace.
After taking off from Kuala Lumpur on Friday March 8, it vanished around an hour into its flight with 239 people onboard.
It made no distress call, and despite a huge search operation involving dozens of countries, reported satellite signals and false leads, investigators have failed to find any trace of it.
Here we look back at how the last 14 days have unfolded.
Saturday, March 8
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12:41am (1441 GMT Friday), and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30am (2230 GMT) the same day. On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew.
Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff . No distress signal and weather is clear at the time.
Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.
Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 17:21 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.
Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after take off and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website's tracking records a minute later while still climbing.
Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters.
Two men from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen .
Sunday, March 9
Malaysia Airlines says fears worst and is working with U.S. company that specialises in disaster recovery.
Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.
Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is "examining additional suspect passports".
Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia tells Reuters.
Monday, March 10
The United States review of American spy satellite imagery shows no signs of mid-air explosion.
As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over whether a bomb or hijacking could have brought down the Boeing airliner .
Hijacking could not be ruled out, said the head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahmanthe, adding the missing jet was an "unprecedented aviation mystery".
Tuesday, March 11
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble names the two men who boarded jet with stolen passports as Iranians, aged 18 and 29, who had entered Malaysia using their real passports. "The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," Noble said.
Malaysian police chief said the younger man appeared to be an illegal immigrant. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said.
Malaysian police say they are investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure .
Malaysia's military believes missing jet turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters. The jet made it into the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, along Malaysia's west coast, said the officer.
A Colorado-based company has put "crowdsourcing" to work in search for a missing jet, enlisting Internet users to comb through satellite images of more than 1,200 square miles (3,200 square km) of open seas for any signs of wreckage.
Wednesday, March 12
The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expands to an area stretching from China to India , as authorities struggle to answer what had happened to the aircraft that vanished almost five days ago with 239 people on board.
Its revealed that the finals words spoken by one of the pilots from the cockpit of the plane to ground control were "all right, good night" . The comment came as the plane flew from Malaysian into Vietnamese air space.
Thursday March 13
A Chinese satellite picture appears to show the outline of wreckage floating in the South China Sea, but Vietnamese search teams failed to find any sign of the objects.
Aviation experts say they believe the missing airliner could have flown for an extra four hours, after it lost contact with traffic controllers. The new theory was based on data downloaded automatically from the jet's engines.
It was also revealed that satellites picked up faint electronic pulses from MH370 after it went missing.
China said that they would not stop searching for the missing aircraft so long as there is a "glimmer of hope".
Investigators began looking into suggestions that the plane may have been deliberately flown towards the Andaman Islands
Friday March 14
A satellite company revealed it had received signals for MH370 five hours after it disappeared, suggesting the plane was still flying and had not crashed, and the search was dramatically shifted to large parts of the Indian Ocean.
Saturday March 15
The investigation into the disappearance shifted towards foul play, amid suggestions the plane was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course.
Malaysian authorities then gave a press conference where they confirmed that they believed "deliberate action" had caused the plane to veer off course, and that someone deliberately shut down its communication and tracking systems.
New satellite information suggests the plane was flown west into the Straits of Malacca, but could then have gone down either one of two huge north or south corridors, spanning large tracts of land and deep oceans.
Police searched the homes of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.
Sunday March 16
Pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is picture wearing a T-shirt with a Democracy is Dead slogan, sparking fears he could have hijacked the plane as an anti-government protest.
The number of countries involved in the search increased from 14 to 25, as Malaysian authorities revealed all passengers, crew and ground staff associated with the flight were under investigation.
Investigators revealed a flight simulator had been found at Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home, and taken away for further analysis.
At a press conference, it was suggested that Flight MH370 could have been on the ground when it sent its final satellite signal, and that its transmission system was switched off after its final communication with ground control.
Monday March 17
Flight engineer Mohd Kairul Amri Selamat, who was also one of the passengers on board the plane, comes under investigation. Police say they are looking at anyone on the plane who may have had aviation skills and knowledge.
A theory emerges that the missing plane could be in a Taliban controlled base, where it could be being kept ready for use at a later date.
It is also suggested MH370 may have secretly flown at just 5,000ft to avoid radar detection.
Tuesday March 18
After days of frustration at the lack of confirmed information, relatives of some of the Chinese passengers on board the plane threaten to go on hunger strike.
Wednesday March 19
The FBI joined the search for the Malaysia Airlines jet, with the agency dedicating resources to analysing computer hard-drives seized from the homes of the plane's pilots.
Distraught relatives are bundled out of a press conference after storming in with a banner demanding more information.
Thursday March 20
Search teams spot huge chunks of possible wreckage in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off the western coast of Australia. One is 78ft long, the other 25ft. The find prompts the launch of another focused air and sea search mission from Perth.
Britain sends HMS Echo to join the search in the Indian Ocean.
Friday March 21
The search off the Australian coast continues for a second day, but flights to the site where possible debris was spotted fail to find anything.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority say they continue to focus on locating any survivors.
Saturday March 22
There was a dramatic moment at the Malaysian authorities' daily press conference when the country's transport minister was handed a note saying a Chinese satellite had spotted a "floating object" in the southern search corridor which could be debris.
The object measured 22.5m by 13m and was 120k south west of where an Australian satellite had previously spotted two other objects.
There were also angry scenes as at press conference in Beijing, where officials were briefing relatives of Chinese passengers who, frustrated at the lack of concrete information, demanded to know "the truth".
Search missions in the southern Indian ocean failed to find anything for a third day.
Sunday March 23
A French satellite became the third to spot objects in the southern search corridor, 1,430 miles from Perth.
But again search crews setting off from Perth - including four military and four civilian planes - failed to find any sign of it.
U.S. Navy black box locator joins search for missing Malaysian plane
By Jane Wardell and Matt Siegel
SYDNEY/PERTH Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:39pm EDT
One of two Japanese Government P-3 aircraft arrives at RAAF base Pearce March 23, 2014 in Bullsbrook near Perth. REUTERS-Jason Reed
(Reuters) - The United States Navy is moving one of its high-tech Black Box detectors closer to the search area for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane in remote seas off the Australian coast, bolstering hopes wreckage of the plane may be found soon.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board on a flight to Beijing on March 8.
The so-called Towed Pinger Locator will be crucial in finding the black box of the missing jetliner if a debris field is established by an Australian-led international search team scouring an area in the southern Indian Ocean some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.
"If debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited," Commander Chris Budde, U.S. Seventh Fleet Operations Officer, said in an emailed statement.
Attention and resources in the search for the Boeing 777 have shifted in recent days from an initial focus north of the equator to an increasingly narrowed stretch of icy sea in the southern Indian Ocean.
Chinese and Japanese military aircraft were joining a 10-strong international fleet of planes scouring the area for the first time on Monday.
A flotilla of Chinese ships, including the icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, is also making its way south.
Budde stressed that bringing in the black box detector, which is towed behind a vessel at slow speeds and can pick up "pings" from a black box to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet, was a precautionary measure.
Similarly, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss stressed the challenges of the search.
"It's a lot of water to look for just perhaps a tiny object," Truss told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio.
"Today we expect the weather to deteriorate and the forecast ahead is not that good, so it's going to be a challenge, but we will stick at it," he said.
Two Chinese military Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft, two Australian P3 Orions and two ultra-long range civilian jets were in the early search party on Monday. Another ultra-long range jet, a U.S. Navy P8 Poseidon and two Japanese P3 Orions were due to depart later in the day.
FLOATING OBJECTS
Australia was analyzing French radar images showing potential floating debris that were taken some 850 kms (530 miles) north of the current search area.
"We only recently got this information and we are still examining it," an AMSA spokeswoman told Reuters by telephone. Malaysia said it received the images on Sunday and passed them on to Australia.
"We are taking it into account but at this stage we are still focused on the same search area," the spokeswoman said, contradicting earlier comments from Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss that the search area had been expanded north to take into account the French sighting.
Australia has used a U.S. satellite image of two floating objects to frame its search area.
The search planes are zeroing in on the areas around where the earlier sightings were made in an effort to find the object identified by China and other small debris, including a wooden pallet, spotted by a search plane on Saturday.
China said the object it had seen on the satellite image was 22 meters long (74ft) and 13 meters (43ft) wide.
It could not be determined easily from the blurred images whether the objects were the same as those detected by Australia, but the Chinese photograph could depict a cluster of smaller objects, said a senior military officer from one of the 26 nations involved in the search.
The wing of a Boeing 777-200ER is approximately 27 meters long and 14 meters wide at its base, according to estimates derived from publicly available scale drawings. Its fuselage is 63.7 meters long by 6.2 meters wide.
NASA said it would use high-resolution cameras aboard satellites and the International Space Station to look for possible crash sites in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. space agency is also examining archived images collected by instruments on its Terra and Aqua environmental satellites, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel.
"Our satellites and space-based cameras are designed for long-term scientific data gathering and Earth observation. They're really not meant to look for a missing aircraft, and obviously NASA isn't a lead agency in this effort. But we're trying to support the search, if possible," Beutel said.
Truss said the aircraft flying on Monday would be focused on searching by sight, rather than radar, which can be tricky to use because of the high seas and wind in the area. Civilian aircraft, which can carry more people, have joined the search.
HIJACK OR SABOTAGE?
Investigators believe someone on the flight shut off the plane's communications systems. Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
That has led them to focus on hijacking or sabotage, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems. Faint electronic "pings" detected by a commercial satellite suggested it flew for another six hours or so, but could do no better than place its final signal on one of two vast arcs north and south.
The lack of solid news has meant a prolonged and harrowing wait for families of the passengers, who have complained in both Beijing and Kuala Lumpur about the absence of information.
A Malaysian statement said a "high-level" team briefed relatives in Beijing on Sunday in a meeting that lasted more than six hours.
While the southern arc is now the main focus of the search, Malaysia says efforts will continue in both corridors until confirmed debris are found.
"We still don't even know for certain if the aircraft is in this area," Truss said of the southern Indian Ocean search.
"We're just clutching at whatever little piece of information that comes along to try to find the place we can concentrate the efforts."
(Additional reporting by Irene Klotz; Writing by Jane Wardell; Editing by Paul Tait)
Chinese Air Force Ilyushin aircraft at an Australian air force base near Perth yesterday. They will join the search from today. Photo: Reuters
A crew member of Chinese icebreaker Xuelong searches for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on the south Indian Ocean on March 23, 2014. Photo: Xinhua
Rain was expected to hamper the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet on Monday as search teams headed out at first light into an expanded are of the Indian Ocean.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's rescue coordination centre said the search area had been expanded from 59,000 to 68,500 square kilometres, including a new separate area following radar information provided by France yesterday.
NASA said its scientific satellites were also being used to scour the ocean for objects and that it was trawling through archive data in an effort to spot any clues as to the plane's whereabouts.
Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said early Monday that “nothing of note” was found Sunday, which he described as a “fruitless day".
“It’s going to be a challenge, but we’ll stick at it,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio before the first aircraft left Perth at dawn.
“We’re just, I guess, clutching at whatever little piece of information comes along to try and find a place where we might be able to concentrate the efforts,” he added.
Malaysia yesterday received a batch of 'radar echoes' - electronic signals sent out that can bounce back information about the location of objects - this time from French authorities, showing possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean.
An unnamed Malaysian official said yesterday the data was compiled on Friday. The location was about 930 kilometres north of where objects in images released by China and Australia were located.
"Malaysia immediately relayed [this] to the Australian rescue co-ordination centre," Malaysia's transport ministry said.
The satellite image released by China yesterday showing suspected debris in the southern corridor of the intensified search area in the Indian Ocean. Photo: SCMP
Two Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft will today start searching for potential wreckage in an isolated stretch of the Indian Ocean. It is hoped that any objects recovered may lead to clues on the whereabouts of the plane and the 239 people it was carrying, 154 of whom were Chinese.
A growing international fleet of aircraft and vessels in an Australia-led Indian Ocean search mission found nothing on the fourth day of scouring an area 2,300 kilometres west of Perth.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement Monday that it “reiterates this is a challenging search operation”.
“The flight has been missing since March 8 and AMSA continues to hold the gravest of concerns for the passengers and crew on board the missing flight.”
Photo released by Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) shows satellite image of objects that may be possible debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean. Photo: Xinhua
Today’s search is split into two areas within the same proximity covering a cumulative 68,500 square kilometres,” it said.
“The weather forecast in the search area is expected to deteriorate, with rain likely," it added.
Ships and aircraft scrambled to search for a wooden pallet and other debris after a civilian search plane spotted the objects on Saturday, 14 days after Beijing-bound Flight MH370 vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
Mike Barton, who is a rescue co-ordinator for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), said the search team saw "a wooden pallet and a number of other items … [including] strapping belts of different lengths".
An official with Malaysia Airlines confirmed last night that the plane was carrying wooden pallets but provided no further details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of company policy preventing the official from being named.
NASA said it would use high-resolution cameras aboard satellites and the International Space Station to look for possible crash sites in the Indian Ocean.
The US space agency is also mining archived images collected by instruments on its Terra and Aqua environmental satellites, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel.
"Our satellites and space-based cameras are designed for long-term scientific data gathering and Earth observation. They’re really not meant to look for a missing aircraft, and obviously NASA isn’t a lead agency in this effort. But we’re trying to support the search, if possible," Beutel said.
A relative of Chinese passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370 cries as others protest after a briefing by Malaysian government representatives at a hotel in Beijing, China. Photo: AP
A man covers his face as he walks out from a room reserved for relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines, MH370, in Beijing, China. Photo: AP
After more than two weeks of not knowing the fate of the vanished aircraft or any of its passengers, the world awaits any news on the objects of interest identified by French, Australian and Chinese satellites. Search and rescue teams have been struggling to narrow search areas.
The plane's black box - which will be critical in determining what actually happened on board the flight - has only about 13 days of battery left.
Barton said AMSA had been able to search a smaller "defined area" based on two previous satellite images showing possible objects in the immediate vicinity.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday: "Obviously, we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen."
