Last updated: March 24, 2014 12:16 pm
China and Australia aircraft spot debris in Indian Ocean
Australian and Chinese aircraft have spotted several objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean where international teams are searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is co-ordinating the search in the area, said the crew on board an Australian air force P3 Orion had seen a grey or green circular object and an orange rectangular object. HMAS Success was “on the scene and is attempting to locate [them]”, it added.
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Flight Lieutenant Josh Williams, the pilot of the Australian P3 Orion, told journalists later that several objects had been spotted.
“The first object was rectangular in shape and slightly below the ocean,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “The second object was circular, also slightly below the ocean. We came across a long cylindrical object that was possibly two metres long, 20cm across.”
Hours earlier a Chinese aircraft crew combing the area had seen “two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometres”, according to Xinhua, the Chinese news agency.
Amsa said the two sightings were separate but within Monday’s search area for the Boeing 777 which disappeared 16 days ago with 239 people on board. A US Navy P8 Poseidon aircraft sought to find “the objects reported by the Chinese aircraft but was unable to do so”, the agency added.
The last aircraft left the area shortly after 11pm AEDT (12pm GMT) without any further sightings, Amsa tweeted.
Tony Abbott, who revealed the Australian aircraft’s discovery in parliament, said: “I caution again . . . that we don’t know whether any of these objects are from MH370, they could be flotsam, nevertheless we are hopeful we can recover these objects soon and that will take us a step closer to resolving this tragic mystery.”
The latest visual sightings and three sets of satellite images – from US, Chinese and French sources – have narrowed the search in recent days to a section of a roughly 60,000 square kilometre area 2,500km southwest of Perth.
While Australia is leading the search in the area, China has bolstered its presence there and now has 10 Chinese ships in the southern corridor, as well as aircraft.
Ten aircraft were deployed on Monday to the search zone. In addition to the two Chinese transport aeroplanes, they include sophisticated US, Japanese and Australian surveillance aircraft and three long-range jets.
Meanwhile, Malaysia said its police had interviewed more than a hundred people, including families of both the pilot and co-pilot, as part of a probe that has included all 239 people on board the airliner when it went missing on March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Hishammuddin Hussein, defence and acting transport minister, said a “technical committee” of the investigation was considering releasing a transcript of the last communications between the cockpit and ground control.
He also confirmed that flight MH370 was carrying wooden pallets. “However, there is as yet no evidence that these are related to the wooden pallets reportedly sighted in the Australian search area,” Mr Hussein said, referring to an earlier sighting.
On Sunday, French satellite radar information raised hopes of progress in the search for the missing aeroplane, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities said the satellite detected “potential objects” near the search area.
The largest search for a missing airliner in aviation history shifted from the South China Sea to the southern Indian Ocean last week after Australia said images it had received from a US satellite company were a “credible” lead.
A British navy ship equipped with advanced underwater sensors is on its way to the search area from the Gulf.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing in the early hours of March 8 and disappeared from radar within an hour. Satellite data indicated that it had flown along one of two arcs – a northern corridor that stretches to Kazakhstan and a southern corridor that runs into the Indian Ocean.
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