Malaysia plane: US hints at shift in search to west
Malaysia plane: Indian Ocean search for missing jet
(about 4 hours later)
US officials helping with the search for Flight MH370 are "shifting focus" to the "Indian Ocean region".
The US has sent surveillance teams to the Indian Ocean to help search for the missing Malaysian plane, after claims emerged that it may have flown for longer than investigators had thought.
However, one official told the BBC that this did not necessary mean specific new leads.
Unnamed officials said the plane sent signals to satellites for up to five hours after its apparent disappearance.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said fresh lines of investigation were the reason why the scope had widened.
However, investigators stressed that the information was not conclusive.
The plane went missing early on Saturday with 239 people on board. A search over a massive area has failed to find any clue to its disappearance.
Rescuers have so far failed to find any trace of flight MH370, which vanished last Saturday with 239 people on board.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that "because of new information, we may be part of an effort to open a new search area in the Indian Ocean,'' and that the US was consulting with the Malaysian government on what resources might be deployed.
The plane, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, last made contact with air-traffic control over the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia.
However, officials told the BBC the intelligence was "not concrete enough to merit a rise in expectations".
The US, which is one of a number of countries helping in the search for the plane, has sent a navy destroyer and a sophisticated surveillance aircraft to the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles west of Malaysia.
The US Navy has also announced it is moving a destroyer, the USS Kidd, from its search position in the Gulf of Thailand, to the west coast of Malaysia.
The Indian navy, air force and coast guard are also now assisting after a request for help from the Malaysian government.
Meanwhile, the Indian Navy, Air Force and coast guard are also now assisting, after a request for help from the Malaysian government.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Kuala Lumpur says there have already been a number of false leads in the search for the missing plane.
Data claims
However, he says the latest claims are being taken seriously by the United States.
In an echo of claims made in the Wall Street Journal earlier on Thursday that the plane transmitted engine data for hours after the plane disappeared, US officials briefed on the search told Associated Press that Boeing systems on the plane also sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing.
Several US media reports on Thursday cited unnamed officials as saying that the Boeing 777 was "pinging" satellites for hours after its last contact with air-traffic controllers.
The Boeing 777-200 was not transmitting data to the satellite, but was instead sending out a signal to establish contact, said the official, who was not named.
That led searchers to believe the plane could have flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar sighting.
If true, it could suggest the aircraft was still flying.
White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that US teams were shifting their focus to the Indian Ocean because of "new information", but he gave no further details.
Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data during flight on how the aircraft is functioning. Malaysia Airlines did not subscribe to that service, but the plane was still automatically sending pings to the satellite, the official said.
Some 153 of the passengers on board the Malaysian Airlines plane were Chinese, and Beijing has been putting pressure on Malaysia to intensify its search.
That led searchers to believe the plane could have flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar sighting, the official said. The plane had enough fuel to fly about four more hours, he said.
Earlier this week, Chinese officials released satellite pictures of debris in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile two American officials have told ABC news that two on-board communication systems stopped transmitting data at different times, possibly indicating that the plane did not suffer catastrophic failure.
But Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the images were not connected to Flight MH370's disappearance.
The data reporting system, they claimed, stopped transmitting at 01:07 (17:07 GMT), while the transponder, which transmits location and altitude and identifies the plane to radar, shut down at 01:21 (17:21 GMT), they told ABC.
Earlier on Thursday, Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein rejected the Wall Street Journal's claims about engine data transmission, saying that both engine makers Rolls-Royce, and Malaysian Airlines said they were "inaccurate".
"The last transmission from the aircraft was at 01:07 which indicated that everything was normal," he said. The Malaysian government has yet to respond to the latest reports.
Satellite image confusion
Also on Thursday, Mr Hussain said that Chinese satellite pictures of debris in the South China Sea were not connected to Flight MH370's disappearance.
The grainy satellite images were released by China's State Administration of Science on Wednesday.
He said the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur had told Malaysian authorities that the release of the pictures was a "mistake".
He said the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur had told Malaysian authorities that the release of the pictures was a "mistake".
Chinese state TV is still treating the pictures as relevant and says a warship is continuing to search for the debris in the South China Sea.
However, Chinese state TV said a warship was continuing to search for the debris and suggested that Malaysia had been unable to analyse the pictures properly.
Correspondents say the general agreement in China is that Chinese search efforts are going to continue despite Malaysia's dismissal of the satellite pictures.
Meanwhile, a Chinese research institute on Friday said it had found evidence of a "sea floor event" some 90 minutes after the plane disappeared.
Some have dismissed Malaysian efforts to find the plane, and a state media TV report has suggested Malaysia was unable to analyse China's satellite pictures properly, correspondents say.
The seismology research group at the University of Science and Technology of China said it happened 116 km north-east of the last point of contact of the plane, in an area not known for seismic activity, according to state media.
The plane was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur and 153 Chinese were on board.
The research group said the vibrations could have been caused by the plane plunging into the sea.
In Vietnam, an air traffic official said five ships and three aircraft had been sent on Thursday to the area indicated by the Chinese satellite images but had found nothing.
