Malaysia Airlines MH370: Tony Abbott says he didn't 'jump the gun' over possible MH370 debris

Updated

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he did not "jump the gun" by announcing that satellite footage showed what could be debris from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Authorities have identified two objects on satellite images almost 2,500 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, but bad weather hampered initial searches by an RAAF Orion aircraft yesterday.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the search efforts, says five aircraft are scouring the area today while a Norwegian registered car carrier ship is already in the zone and another merchant ship will arrive tonight.

AMSA says the two objects on the satellite imaging have been assessed as "credible", but cautioned they could be unrelated to flight MH370.

Speaking today during an official visit to Papua New Guinea, Mr Abbott says he has a duty to keep the families of those missing informed on every development in the search for the jet.

"Now it could just be a container that's fallen off a ship, we just don't know," he said.

"But we owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle.

"We also owe it to them to give them information as soon as it's to hand and I think I was doing that yesterday in the Parliament."

AMSA says it holds grave concerns for the 239 people on board, which includes six Australians.

Two-thirds of the those on board the flight are Chinese, and Mr Abbott says he has spoken with Chinese president Xi Jinping by phone.

Mr Abbott says Mr Xi is "devastated" and Australia will do its duty to follow all possible leads.

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

Seven Chinese ships are currently headed for the southern Indian Ocean, according to China's state news agency, Xinhua, with three navy ships already on their way.

Xinhua also said the Antarctic research icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, would head for the area "as soon as possible". The Xuelong was anchored in the western Australian port of Fremantle.

Three Australian RAAF Orions and a long-range Bombardier Global Express left Perth earlier today, and were joined by a US P8 Poseidon late this afternoon.

One of the Orions was carrying an ABC cameraman.

The aircraft each spend about two hours searching before flying back to Western Australia to refuel.

The satellite images from commercial company DigitalGlobe were taken on Sunday and show what authorities say are two objects in the water, one as large as 24 metres in length.

Warren Truss, who is Acting Prime Minister while Mr Abbott is in Papua New Guinea for an official visit, says authorities had dropped buoys in the search area to analyse the effects of the wind and currents to pinpoint where the objects may have drifted since then.

The objects were estimated to be moving at around 12km per hour.

Mr Truss also says the objects spotted on the satellite images may have also sunk.

"Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating," he told reporters in Perth.

"It may have slipped to the bottom."

The Poseidon has advanced radar to detect underwater objects.

A reporter aboard the US Navy Poseidon told America's ABC network that their sweeps of the area yesterday only turned up a freighter and several pods of dolphins.

"This is a plane that gets very close to the water. Most of the time we were skimming at about 300 feet (about 90 metres) above the water - you could see a basketball if it were in the water," he said.

"Plus they had high-tech radar, sweeping 16 miles (about 25km) on each side of the plane. If there was something there, this plane surely would have spotted it."

Radars picking up whales and dolphins

A Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion flew to Perth a few days ago to help in the search and spent yesterday looking for any trace of the objects.

New Zealand Air Commodore Mike Yardley says so far the radar has only turned up whales and dolphins.

"Anything on the surface or above it, we will see and get that returned," he said.

"Our equipment was working very well yesterday and even picking up very small objects like these mammals.

"So you could imagine if there was a large piece of fuselage, piece of metal from an aircraft, then of course we would have found that if it was on the surface."

Air Commodore Yardley says when the radar picks up an animal, the only way to confirm that it is not a piece of wreckage is to make visual contact with it.

"We have to actually fly across, and we will stay within that region, until we see them breach the water again and visually see them, or catch them on our cameras.

"We can't basically tell any difference on the radar screen whether it's a dolphin or a 44 gallon drum."

Bad weather hampered initial search after imagery was released

An Orion was unable to locate the debris yesterday evening because of limited visibility from cloud and rain.

"The weather conditions were such that we were unable to see for very much of the flight today [Thursday] but the other aircraft that are searching, they may have better conditions," Flight Lieutenant Chris Birrer told reporters.

Air Commodore Yardley says bad weather meant that the New Zealand plane forced to fly lower than usual.

"Clouds, particularly, just reduce your ability to search insofar as the amount of search that you can cover," he said.

"If the weather was perfect we would probably search at about the 300-400 metres. But because we had to go lower that meant our horizon that we could see objects on was a lot less, so our track spacing that we were flying needed to be a lot closer."

Air Commodore Yardley says the aircraft will be involved in the search again tomorrow.

"They haven't put out the flying program yet, but I anticipate that we will be one of the first airborne," he said.

Former Australian Navy chief Admiral Chris Barrie says the larger object in the satellite imager could be a shipping container lost at sea.

"The 24 metres sort of rang that bell in my mind," he said.

He says he expects the search for debris from the missing plane will last days or even weeks.

DigitalGlobe said the sheer number of images it captures contributed to a delay in identifying the two objects.

Spokesman Turner Brinton says the company's five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometres of Earth imagery each day.

"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," he said.

An Australian space engineer has warned against putting too much faith in the images, saying satellites are limited in what they can do.

"These are just very expensive cameras flying in the sky and they regularly go over particular spots, but you can't send them anywhere," he said.

"They're in a fixed orbit and you've got to tell them in advance where to take the imagery.

"So expecting a satellite to have known where the plane was is not very useful."

Yesterday Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the images had been "corroborated to a certain extent" by other satellites, making them more credible than previous leads.

ABC/wires

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

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