SYDNEY - The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 focused on a new area in the Indian Ocean today as radar data indicated the plane probably flew a shorter distance than earlier estimated.
The new lead was based on analysis of radar data as the plane flew between the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait. It showed the Boeing 777 airliner traveled faster than previously estimated, using more fuel, and may not have gone as far south as originally thought.
“This is the most credible lead to where debris may be located,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement. The new area is about 123,000 square miles and is 1,250 miles west of Perth.
The previous search area was more southwest and about 1,550 miles from Perth.
Six ships - the HMAS Success and five Chinese vessels - are relocating to the new search zone, and the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organization is “re-tasking satellites” to scan the area. The decision to move the search zone was made on adviceprovided by the international investigation team in Malaysia, the Maritime Safety Authority said.
The determination of the plane’s flight path could be further refined as the investigation team continues its analysis, the Australian agency said.
Weather conditions that halted aerial searches Thursday had since improved. Ten aircraft, including five P3 Orions and a P-8 Poseidon, were deployed for today’s search operations, according to the Maritime Safety Authority. The U.S. will send a second P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane to assist in the hunt, that also includes Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Chinaand Japan.
Satellite sightings have also provided a new focus in the multination search to find the Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished March 8 with 239 passengers and crew.
Thai satellite images of more than 300 objects in the south Indian Ocean produced another lead in the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with Japanese spacecraft also locating items as bad weather halted an airborne search.
The Thai photos from Monday show objects spanning about 6 feet to about 50 feet floating about 1,680 miles southwest of Perth, said Anond Snidvongs, executive director of the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency. A Japanese satellite detected about a dozen pieces of possible debris in an image Wednesday, Kyodo News Service said.
The scans follow those from France’s Airbus Defense and Space taken Sunday and showing more than 100 objects nearly 1,600 miles from Perth.
Eleven planes were deployed Thursday and returned to Perth as bad weather closed in, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’sTwitter feed.
The Japanese images showed objects recorded during a six-hour period Wednesday in the same general search area about 1,550 miles from Perth, with 10 of the items being squareshaped, Kyodo reported, citing a government statement. The largest piece measured about 13 feet by 26 feet, it said.
The Airbus scans showed objects as long as 75 feet scattered over about 150 square miles of the ocean, Malaysian officials said. The Thai images also have been sent to the Malaysian authorities, Anond said, as has the Japanese data, according to the Kyodo report.
“We cannot tell whether the potential objects are from MH370,” Malaysia’s Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur. “Nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation.”
Malaysian Airlines has said there’s no hope of survivors on the Boeing 777.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that the jet’s last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean off Australia’s west coast and that the flight ended there, basedon satellite data from Inmarsat.
The U.S. is sending equipment that can be towed behind a ship to help locate the aircraft’s black boxes, which can emit pings for 30 days after becoming immersed in water. Recovery of the data and cockpit-voice recorders from the 777 would help investigators decipher the plane’s movements and its pilots’ actions in the hours after contact was lost.
Meanwhile, the FBI should “within a day or two” finish examining the contents of computer drives from the home flight simulator built by the plane’s captain, Director James Comey told a congressional committee Wednesday. Malaysia asked for the FBI’s help in retrieving files that were deleted from the simulator last month.
The FBI has received good cooperation from Malaysia, he said. Agents there “speak to their counterparts every single day and update them, and get new information from them if they have it,” Comey said.
Information for this article was contributed by Edward Johnson, David Fickling, Manirajan Ramasamy, Akiko Nishimae and David Lerman of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 03/28/2014