Planes set out in hunt for ‘objects’

Sea off Australia to be scoured for clues in lost-jet mystery

Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines, MH370 comfort each other as they wait for a news briefing by the airlines' officials at a hotel ballroom in Beijing, China, Thursday, March 20, 2014. Flight 370 disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation, but have said the evidence so far suggests the flight was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines, MH370 comfort each other as they wait for a news briefing by the airlines' officials at a hotel ballroom in Beijing, China, Thursday, March 20, 2014. Flight 370 disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation, but have said the evidence so far suggests the flight was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Search planes flew out of Australia this morning to scour rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth for objects that may be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, officials said.

In what one official called the “best lead” of the nearly 2-week-old aviation mystery, a satellite detected two large objects floating off the southwest coast of Australia about halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic.

The discovery of the objects raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard Flight 370, which disappeared March 8.

One of the objects was almost 80 feet in length and the other was 15 feet, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division.

“This is a lead, it’s probably the best lead we have right now,” Young said. He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a shipping container.

A search Thursday with four planes in cloud and rain found nothing, and Australian authorities said early today that efforts were resuming with the first of five aircraft - a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion - leaving at dawn for the area about 1,400 miles from western Australia.

A civilian Gulfstream jet and a second Orion were to depart later this morning, and a third Orion was due to fly out in the early afternoon to scour more than 8,880 square miles of ocean.

The area in the southern Indian Ocean is so remote it takes aircraft longer to fly there - four hours - than it allows for the search.

A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft was scheduled to leave the base this afternoon, but like the other planes, it will have enough fuel for only two to three hours of search time before returning to Perth.

Three Chinese naval ships also were heading to the area. China’s search-and-rescue agency also said it had asked the country’s Oceanic Administration to dispatch the icebreaker Xue Long (the Snow Dragon), which was in Perth after a voyage to Antarctica in January, to take part in the search.

Warren Truss, Australia’s acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, said weather conditions in the search area were poor and may get worse.

“And so clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search,” Truss said.

News that possible plane parts had been found marked a new phase in the emotional roller coaster for distraught relatives of the passengers, who have criticized Malaysia for not releasing timely information about the plane.

“If it turns out that it is truly MH370, then we will accept that fate,” said Selamat Bin Omar, the father of a Malaysian passenger on the jet, which carried mostly Chinese and Malaysians.

But he cautioned that relatives still “do not yet know for sure whether this is indeed MH370 or something else. Therefore we are still waiting for further notice from the Australian government.”

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Thursday that “for all the families around the world, the one piece of information that they want most is the information we just don’t have - the location of MH370.”

Malaysian officials held a meeting Thursday night with the relatives in a hotel near Kuala Lumpur, but journalists were kept away.

Hamid Amran, who had a child on Flight 370, said questions asked at the meeting made it “apparent that Malaysia’s military is incapable of protecting its own airspace.”

He said he “believes that my child and all the other passengers are still alive. I will not give up hope.”

A group of Malaysian government and airline officials also flew to Beijing on Thursday night to meet families there.

The hunt for the Boeing 777 has been punctuated by several false leads since it disappeared above the Gulf of Thailand. Oilslicks that were spotted did not contain jet fuel. A yellow object thought to be from the plane turned out to be a piece of trash. Chinese satellite images showed possible plane debris, but nothing was found.

Flight 370 disappeared on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation but have said the evidence so far suggests the plane was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.

Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism, or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.

Malaysian authorities have said files were deleted Feb. 3 from a home flight simulator of the missing plane’s pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, but Hishammuddin said Thursday that he had no new information on efforts to recover those files.

The FBI has joined forces with Malaysian authorities to analyze deleted data on the simulator.

Information for this article was contributed by Rod McGuirk, Todd Pitman, Nick Perry and Julia Gronnevet of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/21/2014

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