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Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: China checks 'possible plane debris' in plane search Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: China reports new image of debris in the Indian Ocean
(about 1 hour later)
A large piece of possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been spotted in satellite images by China, according to officials. A new lead has been dramatically introduced into the case of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with China releasing a satellite image of what could be wreckage from the plane.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's transport minister, dramatically interrupted a press conference when he was handed a written note from the Chinese ambassador to deliver the news. The grainy photograph showing a large object measuring 72ft by 43ft bolstered hopes that the southern Indian Ocean may yet yield clues to one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation history.
He said an item 22 metres long and 13 metres wide had been seen in the southern corridor of the Indian Ocean, an area which investigators had pinpointed as the most likely endpoint for the Boeing 777. The image’s release, and the investigation by the Chinese, was announced by Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, after he was handed a note during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur. The image was captured by a Chinese satellite last Tuesday, two days after an Australian satellite spotted two objects, one of them a similar length to this latest object.
China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said on its website that a Chinese satellite took an image of the object at about noon on Tuesday. The image location was about 75 miles south of where an Australian satellite viewed two objects two days earlier. The larger object was about as long as the one the Chinese satellite detected. The new discovery was about 75 miles south of the original location – a distance which debris conceivably could have travelled in two days. Experts cautioned, though, that it remained a distinct possibility that both satellites had captured a lost shipping container, rather than a portion of the plane which disappeared off radar screens during an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March.
Ships have been sent to verify the sighting but a tropical cyclone that devastated Christmas Island is threatening efforts with high winds and rough seas. Oceanographer Dr Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton said the object spotted by the Chinese satellite was unlikely to be the same as one of two objects highlighted by the Australian authorities as it would have had to have travelled against the prevailing current.
Mr Hussein had earlier told the conference he believed there was "still hope" for relatives.He said: "I can give an assurance to all family members out there that as long as there is hope, we will continue with the search." However, he said it was conceivable that all three pieces of debris were remains of the plane as they could have drifted that far apart in the two weeks since the plane went missing. This scenario, Dr Boxall said, was “not unlikely”.
Aeroplanes from China, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. converged to scan a remote stretch of the Southern Indian Ocean, where two large objects were spotted in satellite pictures released last week but there had been no more news after a third day of searching. The satellite picture from CCTV NEWS, the English news channel of China Central Television.
The satellite picture from CCTV NEWS, the English news channel of China Central Television. Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister of Australia, said weather conditions that had hampered earlier efforts with bad visibility were improving. Aircraft from Australia, New Zealand and US were joined by two military planes from China, which has also dispatched ships to the site about 1,500 miles south-west of Perth where the object was photographed by the high-definition Earth observation satellite Gaofen-1 on 18 March.
During an official visit to Papua New Guinea, he said: “There are aircraft and vessels from other nations that are joining this particular search because tenuous though it inevitably is, this is nevertheless the first credible evidence of anything that has happened to Flight MH370.” Speaking before the new satellite image was released, Warren Truss, Australia’s acting Prime Minister, warned that a comprehensive search could take a long time.
Two Japanese planes will arrive on Sunday and more ships were arriving to join the operation in waters up to 7,000 metres deep. “It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search until we’re absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile – and that day is not in sight,” he said in Perth, the staging post for search aircraft. “If there’s something there to be found, I’m confident that this search effort will locate it.”
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the currents in the area typically move at about one metre a second but can sometimes move faster. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority map of the planned search area for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 on March 21, 2014
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority map of the planned search area for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 on March 21, 2014 Based on the typical speed, a current could theoretically move a floating object more than 100 miles in just two days. The search is a challenging one, in an isolated location with strong currents and rough seas, and an ocean depth of up to 23,000ft. Mr Hussein noted that a low-level warning has been declared for a tropical cyclone approaching Australia, although it is currently to the country’s north.
Warren Truss, Australia's acting prime minister while Mr Abbott is abroad, admitted a complete search could take a long time. The Transport Minister said he wanted to pay “special tribute to the men and women from all countries who are putting themselves in harm’s way in the search for MH370”, with some of the vessels joining the operation possibly having “to go through the cyclone to get to the [search] area”.
“It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search until we're absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile - and that day is not in sight,” he said. Pings sent by MH370 for several hours after it disappeared indicate that it ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor extending towards Antarctica.
“If there's something there to be found, I'm confident that this search effort will locate it.” The British survey ship HMS Echo, which is equipped with sensitive underwater detection equipment, is on its way, but a Ministry of Defence spokesman said it would take more than 10 days to get to the southern corridor.
Satellite pictures showed two large objects floating in the ocean about 1,500 miles south-west of Perth, raising hopes of finding debris from Flight MH370, which vanished with 239 passengers and crew en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Malaysian authorities believe the Boeing 777 veered drastically off course – with its communication systems disabled – as a result of deliberate action by someone on board. The most likely scenario, they say, was a hijacking, pilot sabotage or a sudden mid-air technical crisis.
The agony of families waiting to learn the fate of their loved ones spilled over again, with relatives angrily confronting Malaysian government and airline officials at a meeting in Beijing. The plane was carrying 153 Chinese passengers.
“You can’t leave here! We want to know what the reality is!” relatives shouted in frustration, before releasing a media statement saying they believed they were being “strung along, kept in the dark and lied to by the Malaysian government”.
Relatives of passengers on board Air France Flight AF447, which went missing on the way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, urged the families of MH370 to demand an investigation by experts of their choice to “safeguard full transparency and best practices”. Bernd Gans, who lost a daughter, and Barbara Crolow, who lost her son, wrote in an open letter that the relatives should also demand financial aid from the Malaysian government.
Experts said families could seek compensation now. Floyd Wisner, a US lawyer who represented the families of Flight AF447, said that when a plane belonging to the Indonesian airline Adam Air disappeared in 2007, he secured a deal with the insurers before any trace of the plane was found. “The families may seek compensation even before any wreckage or bodies are found,” he? said.
“In the coming days there are likely to be more difficulties for the government and the people of Malaysia, more pain,” said Murray Hiebert, a South-east Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “In some senses, Malaysia and China may go through the grief the US experienced following the September 11 terrorist attacks, after which many bodies were never recovered.
“Obviously this is a disaster that Malaysia will carry in its national psyche. It will have to find a way to incorporate it into its narrative, and learn to live and move forward with the pain and loss, which won’t go away for a long time.”
Additional reporting by Ian Johnston