KUALA LUMPUR // The search in the southern Indian Ocean for debris for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane described as the “best lead” so far will resume on Friday after bad weather hampered efforts.
Four planes were checking to see if two large objects spotted in satellite imagery bobbing in the remote ocean were debris from Fight MH370 that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.
One of the objects was 24 metres in length and the other was 5 metres. There could be other objects in the area, a four-hour flight from Australia’s south-western coast, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division.
“This is a lead, it’s probably the best lead we have right now,” Mr Young said.
He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a container.
A statement from the authority said the four planes searched an area of 23,000 square kilometres about 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth yesterday without success. The area is about halfway between Australia and desolate islands off the Antarctic.
“The search will continue on Friday,” it said. It earlier said the search had been hampered by low visibility caused by clouds and rain.
News that possible plane parts had been found marked a new phase in the emotional roller coaster for distraught relatives of the passengers, who have criticised Malaysia harshly for not releasing timely information about the plane. While they still hope their loved ones will somehow be found, they acknowledged that news of the debris could mean the plane plunged into the ocean.
“If it turns out that it is truly MH370 then we will accept that fate,” said Selamat bin Omar, the father of a Malaysian passenger on the jet, which carried mostly Chinese and Malaysian nationals.
But he cautioned that relatives still “do not yet know for sure whether this is indeed MH370 or something else. Therefore we are still waiting for further notice from the Australian government”.
The Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein said yesterday that “for all the families around the world, the one piece of information that they want most is the information we just don’t have – the location of MH370”.
Malaysian officials held a meeting yesterday with the relatives in a hotel near Kuala Lumpur, but journalists were kept away.
The family members walked into the meeting with sad faces and one Malay man with two children said “no pictures please”.
Mr Young said the depth of the ocean in the latest area, which is south from where the search had been focused since Monday, is several thousand meters.
He said it may be difficult to spot the objects as they “are relatively indistinct on the imagery ... but those who are experts indicate they are credible sightings. The indication to me is of objects that are a reasonable size and probably awash with water, moving up and down over the surface”.
The two images were taken on Sunday, but Australian Air Commodore John McGarry said it took time to analyse them.
Some analysts said the debris is most likely not pieces of Flight 370. “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.
The hunt for the Boeing 777 has been punctuated by several false leads since it disappeared above the Gulf of Thailand. Oil slicks that were spotted did not contain jet fuel. A yellow object thought to be from the plane turned out to be a piece of sea trash. Chinese satellite images showed possible plane debris, but nothing was found.
But this is the first time that possible objects have been spotted since the search area was massively expanded into two corridors, one stretching from northern Thailand into Central Asia and the other from the Strait of Malacca down to southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.
The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St Petersburg was rerouted and arrived yesterday at the area in the Indian Ocean where the possible wreckage was spotted.
“They have been asked to continue the search tomorrow and they will continue tomorrow morning,” Olav Sollie from Hoegh Autoliners said yesterday in Oslo.
The Norwegian ship, which transports cars, was on its way from South Africa to Australia Sollie said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said another commercial ship and an Australian navy vessel were also en route to the search area.
Flight MH370 disappeared on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation, but have said the evidence so far suggests the plane 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 possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.
* Associated Press
