Cargo pallet, belts sighted in hunt for missing MH370

PERTH // Australian officials said Sunday that a wooden cargo pallet along with belts or straps have been spotted in the remote Indian Ocean by one of the aircraft deployed in the hunt for a missing Malaysian jet.

The objects were seen by a civilian aircraft assisting in the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 on Saturday in what the Australian Maritime Safety Authority confirmed was the “first visual sighting in the search so far”.

“Part of the description was a wooden pallet and a number of other items which were nondescript around it and some belts of some different colours around it as well, strapping belts of different lengths,” AMSA aircraft operations coordinator Mike Barton said.

“We tried to refind that yesterday, one of the New Zealand aircraft, and unfortunately they didn’t find it. That’s the nature of it — you only have to be off by a few hundred metres in a fast-travelling aircraft,” he told a press briefing.

More planes joined the search after China released a satellite image showing a large object floating in the search zone.

The desolate area in the Indian Ocean is about 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth, Australia, where three days of searching for similar images from another satellite that emerged earlier in the week have produced no results.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the operation from the country’s western coast, said it refined the search based on the latest clue from the Chinese satellite showing an object that appeared to be 22 metres by 13 metres. It said the object’s position also fell within Saturday’s search area but it had not been sighted.

Sunday’s search involving eight aircraft has been split into two areas within the same proximity covering 59,000 square kilometres. These areas have been determined by drift modelling, the AMSA said.

Despite the frustrating lack of answers, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was upbeat.

“Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope — no more than hope, no more than hope — that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Papua New Guinea.

Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein posted a message on his Twitter account Sunday asking those in churches around the country to offer a “prayer please” for the passengers and crew on Fight 370.

More than 300 Malaysian cycling enthusiasts rode their bikes to the Kuala Lumpur airport to remember the people on-board the jet. The cyclists decorated the bikes with small Malaysian flags and stickers that read “Pray for MH370.”

Seven planes left a base near Perth, where an intense wind was blowing, for a four-hour journey to the search region, the safety authority said. One more will fly out later. The HMAS Success, an Australian navy supply ship, is also taking part.

A cold front was forecast to move through the region later Sunday, which could bring clouds and wind, further hampering efforts to locate any debris thought to be from the plane.

The latest satellite image is another clue in the baffling search for Flight 370, which dropped off air traffic control screens March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

“China hopes that these data will be helpful for searching and rescuing efforts,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.

The missing plane, which had been bound for Beijing, carried 153 Chinese passengers.

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 initial two objects by a satellite led several countries to send planes and ships to a stretch of the ocean south-west 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 24 metres in length and the other was five metres.

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 initial satellite images because experts needed time to examine them.

Two military planes from China have arrived in Perth, and the AMSA said they would join the search on Monday. They join Australian, New Zealand and US aircraft. Japanese planes are also expected soon.

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.

Because the search area is a four-hour flight from land, some of the planes can search for about only two hours before they must fly back. Others may be able to stay for up to five hours before heading back to the base.

The area where the objects were first identified by the Australian authorities is marked by strong currents and rough seas, and the ocean depth varies between 1,150 metres and 7,000 metres.

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 has also asked the US for undersea surveillance equipment to help in the search.

* Agencies