Malaysia Airlines MH370: RAAF planes scour Indian Ocean for possible debris from missing plane

Updated

Australian search planes are scouring the southern Indian Ocean after satellites spotted objects "possibly related" to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) says it has received an expert assessment of commercial satellite imagery of objects it suspects may indicate a "debris field" from the flight, floating in the ocean 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth.

Four Australian search planes, as well as aircraft from the US and New Zealand, have been sent to join the hunt.

This evening AMSA said there was limited visibility in the area and the crew of an RAAF P3 Orion in the search zone had been unable to find any debris.

"RAAF P3 crew unable to locate debris. Cloud and rain limited visibility. Further aircraft to continue search," it tweeted.

At a press conference earlier today, AMSA's John Young said the images indicated that one of the objects measured around 24 metres in length.

Mr Young emphasised the objects may be difficult to locate and they may not be related to the search.

"The objects are relatively indistinct on the imagery. I don't profess to be an expert in assessing the imagery, but those who are expert indicate they are credible sightings," he said.

"The indications to me is of objects that are a reasonable size and probably awash with water bobbing up and down under the surface."

Authorities would not confirm who the satellite belonged to but said they were awaiting further imagery for analysis.

"The task of analysing imagery is quite difficult. It requires drawing down frames and going through frame by frame," Mr Young said.

"This imagery was discovered to reveal a possible object that might indicate a debris field."

Dimensions of the Boeing 777-200ER Wing span: 60.9 metres

Overall length: 63.7 metres

Tail height: 18.5 metres

Fuselage diameter: 6.19 metres

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has spoken with his Malaysian counterpart, said the spotting of the debris are the first tangible breakthrough in the case.

"We don't know what that satellite saw until we can get a much better, much closer look at it at it, but this is the first tangible break-through in what up until now has been an utterly baffling mystery," he said as he arrived in Papua New Guinea for talks on trade, the economy and Manus Island.

"We are throwing all the resources we can at it. We will do everything we humanly can to try to get to the bottom of this."

Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport that "every lead is a hope".

"Ladies and gentlemen, for the families around the world, the one piece of information that we want most, that they want most is information we just don't have - the location of MH370," he said in the daily press briefing.

"Our primary focus has always been to find the aircraft and with every passing day our efforts have intensified.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Watch the full press conference from AMSA (ABC News)

"Yesterday I said we wanted to reduce the area of the search. We now have a credible lead. There remains much work to be done to deploy these assets and this work will continue overnight."

Mr Young said the satellite images are the most promising lead authorities have.

"This is a lead - it's probably the best lead we have right now, but we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it's really meaningful or not," he said.

"And I caution again they will be difficult to find. They may not be associated with the aircraft and we have plenty of experience of that in other searches."

It would not be the first time during the search for MH370 that suspected debris was found out to be unrelated to the aircraft.

During searches in the South China Sea, two large oil slicks suspected to be from MH370 were found to be a type of oil used in ships, while a reported lifeboat was found to be a cable reel covered in seaweed.

Australian Defence assets en route to site

A Norwegian ship arrived in the area late on Thursday night after responding to an Australian request to re-route from its original path to Melbourne.

The HMAS Success is also en route, but AMSA said the Durance class ship will not reach the search zone for "some days".

Mr Young said the Success is "well equipped to recover any objects located and proven to be from MH370".

One of the RAAF aircraft, a C-130 Hercules, will drop marker buoys in the area to assist the RCC in providing information about water movement for drift modelling.

"They will provide an ongoing reference point if the task of relocating the objects becomes protracted," Mr Young said.

Flight MH370 has been missing since it disappeared en route to Beijing from Malaysia on March 8.

So far the investigation has focused on the possibility that the plane was deliberately diverted from its flight path.

The plane is thought to have travelled in either of two directions: north-west into Asia or south-west into the Indian Ocean.

Australia has been leading the search in the southern vector, specifically an area 3,000 kilometres south-west of Perth.

AMSA says the search zone covers 600,000 square kilometres of ocean and has been plotted using data based on the last satellite relay signals sent by the plane.

The search now encompasses an area stretching 7.7 million square kilometres - an area larger than the entire land mass of Australia.

MH370 thought likely to have flown into Indian Ocean

Last night a source close to the investigation told Reuters that authorities probing the jet's disappearance believed it most likely flew into the southern Indian Ocean.

That view was based on the lack of any evidence from countries along the northern corridor that the plane entered their airspace, and the failure to find any trace of wreckage in searches in the upper part of the southern corridor.

"The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

China, which is leading the northern corridor search with Kazakhstan, said it had not yet found any sign of the aircraft crossing into its territory.

Malaysian and US officials believe the aircraft was deliberately diverted perhaps thousands of miles off course, but an exhaustive background search of the passengers and crew aboard has not yielded anything that might explain why.

Last week, a source familiar with official US assessments said it was thought most likely the plane flew south, where it presumably would have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

Search for wreckage on ocean floor 'could take years'

US oceanographer Dr Dave Gallo, who coordinated the search for the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, told 7.30 that any recovery could take years.

Dr Gallo said the search area in the southern Indian Ocean could be five or six times larger than the search zone for the Air France wreckage.

"Once you get the X-marks the spot from the floating debris or from the last-known position, then you want to know how wide should we look and in this case it's going to be difficult," he said.

"In the case of Air France 447, we had some ACARS data, some bursts of information that abruptly stopped after 12 minutes, so we knew the search circle was roughly 80 miles in diameter - that's a big area.

"In this case we don't have that; we're going to have to make some assumptions. It may be a large search area to begin with, but it's a start."

Dr Gallo said there were two methods that could be used to search for the wreckage once a search area was located.

"One is what we used on Air France 447 and the Titanic most recently. They're called AUVs - autonomous underwater vehicles - and they look like torpedoes," he said.

"They carry sonars and cameras and we launch them from the back of the boat and down they go by themselves and they run very, very crisp parallel lines, just like the best farmer's field ploughing back and forth.

"And then they come back to the ship, we upload the data, see what they saw and recharge them, then back under water.

"The more traditional way is to tow a system of long cable behind the ship and with the surface ship going back and forth over the sea floor.

"Maybe in this case we need both of those."

Overcome Chinese relatives grow angry with troubled investigation

The relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers - about two-thirds of those people on flight MH370 - are refusing to give up hope despite the announcement that debris may have been found.

Wen Wancheng, 63, from China's Shandong province, says he will not giving up hope that his son is still alive.

"Do you think I would believe my son is gone?" he said.

"Can I believe he is in the sea? My son is still alive. My son is still alive ... I don't believe the news."

Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities have launched an investigation after anguished Chinese relatives of passengers on the missing flight stormed into a media centre in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday night, calling on authorities to "give us back our families".

The drip feed of often conflicting information has sparked fury among desperate Chinese relatives and drawn condemnation from the nation's authorities.

Amid chaotic scenes, the relatives were besieged by camera-wielding reporters awaiting the start of a daily press briefing by Malaysian officials on the search for the missing aircraft.

Shouting and crying, the relatives unfurled a banner that accused the Malaysian authorities of withholding information and not doing enough to find the plane.

"They give different messages every day. Where's the flight now? We can't stand it anymore," one woman wailed.

ABC/wires

Topics: air-and-space, accidents, disasters-and-accidents, australia, malaysia

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