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Satellite Photos Send Jet Hunt to Remote Part of Indian Ocean Satellite Photos Send Jet Hunt to Southern Indian Ocean
(about 7 hours later)
SYDNEY, Australia — Satellite cameras spotted objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean that might be parts of the Malaysia Airlines jet that vanished on March 8, the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said on Thursday. SYDNEY, Australia — Aircraft and ships rushed to scour a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean on Thursday after satellite photographs showed tantalizing glimpses of two large floating objects that might be pieces of the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner. But the first searchers on the scene could not find the objects.
Mr. Abbott and an Australian rescue organizer both counseled caution about the sighting. The first Royal Australian Air Force plane to fly over the estimated location of the objects returned to base Thursday without spotting anything that fit the description – a reminder of how the hunt for the missing Boeing 777 jetliner could remain long, difficult and possibly fruitless. A P-3 Orion aircraft dispatched by the Royal Australian Air Force was “unable to locate debris — cloud and rain limited visibility,” according to a Twitter message posted by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is managing the search in that part of the ocean. A United States Navy P-8A Poseidon also searched in the area and returned to a base near Perth, Australia, after finding “nothing of significance to report,” according to a message from the Seventh Fleet, which is overseeing the American military contribution to the search.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a message on Twitter that the search aircraft, a P-3 Orion, was “unable to locate debris — cloud and rain limited visibility — further aircraft to continue search.” The Maritime Safety Authority said Friday’s search of the area, which is 2,500 kilometers, or 1,500 miles, southwest of Perth on Australia’s west coast, would include four military aircraft, including two Royal Australian Air Force Orion planes.
Later, a United States Navy P-8A Poseidon also returned from searching the target area to an air base near Perth, the capital of Western Australia, and “had nothing of significance to report,” according to a message from the United States Seventh Fleet, which is overseeing the American military contribution to the search. Cmdr. William J. Marks, the spokesman for the fleet, said in an email that the Poseidon had found “no indication of debris.” “A total of six merchant ships have assisted in the search,” the authority said.
Mr. Abbott told Parliament in Canberra, the capital, that “the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.” He said that after analyzing the images, “two possible objects related to the search have been identified.” The stretch of ocean where the objects were spotted is remote and little traveled. But a cargo ship that happened to be relatively close, bound for Melbourne, Australia, from the island of Mauritius, was diverted south from its usual route two days ago at the request of the Australian authorities. It reached the area of the satellite sighting late on Wednesday, the first ship to arrive there, but it also saw nothing on Thursday. An Australian naval vessel dispatched to the area, the Success, was still several days away.
He cautioned that “we must keep in mind the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult, and it may turn out that they are not related to the search.” Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew members took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing in the early hours of March 8 and disappeared from ground controllers’ screens 40 minutes later. Executives of Hoegh Autoliners, the Norwegian owners of the cargo ship, said at a news conference in Oslo on Thursday that the ship and its crew of 19 were at the authorities’ disposal and would remain in the area as long as needed. Ingar Skiaker, the company’s chief executive, and Sebjorn Dahl, its head of human resources, said the vessel, a car carrier named the St. Petersburg, had radar equipment and powerful searchlights that would be used to scan the ocean surface around the clock.
The part of the ocean where the debris was spotted is remote and little traveled, but a cargo ship that was diverted southward from its usual route two days ago at the request of the Australian authorities reached the area late on Wednesday, the first ship to arrive on the scene. An Australian naval vessel dispatched to the area, some 1,550 miles southwest of Perth, is still some days away. The plane, Flight 370, with 227 passengers and a crew of 12, took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the early hours of March 8 bound for Beijing, and stopped communicating with ground controllers about 40 minutes later. For more than an hour, military radar tracked a plane that was probably Flight 370, veering sharply off the original course and flying west toward the Indian Ocean; automatic satellite signals emitted by the plane suggested that it kept flying for hours after that, with the last signal detected about a half-hour before it would have exhausted its fuel.
Executives of Hoegh Autoliners, the Norwegian owners of the cargo ship, said at a news conference in Oslo on Thursday that the ship and its crew of 19 were at the authorities’ disposal and would remain in the area as long as needed. Ingar Skiaker, the company’s chief executive, and Sebjorn Dahl, its head of human resources, said the vessel, a car carrier named the St. Petersburg, had radar equipment and powerful search lights that would be used to scan the ocean surface around the clock. The executives said weather conditions near the ship were good, but the crew had not spotted anything so far. By that point, the signals indicated, the plane was probably somewhere along a broad arc sweeping from Central Asia through Southeast Asia and out into the ocean; officials are concentrating on the southern portion of the arc as the most likely area, and that is roughly where the floating objects were seen.
John Young, the general manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division, who is overseeing the ocean search off Australia, sought to moderate any hopes that parts of the plane might have been found. John Young, the general manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division, sought on Thursday to moderate any hopes that parts of the jet might finally have been found after 12 days. He said the southern Indian Ocean was liable to contain some large pieces of debris, like containers lost overboard from merchant vessels.
One of the floating objects, he said, appeared to be around 79 feet (24 meters) in length, but he could not say what shape it was or whether it had markings on it that would identify it. One of the floating objects, he said, appeared to be around 24 meters (79 feet) long, but he could not say what shape it was or whether it had markings on it that would identify it. The other appeared to be about 5 meters (16 feet) long, he said. “The fact there are a number located in the same area makes it worth looking at,” Mr. Young said at a news conference in Canberra, calling the sighting “probably the best lead we have right now.”
“On this occasion, the size and the fact there are a number located in the same area makes it worth looking at,” Mr. Young said at a news conference in Canberra. The satellite images, which were released to the public, are dated March 16. “The imagery has been progressively captured by satellites passing over various areas,” John McGarry, air commodore of the Royal Australian Air Force, said at the Canberra news conference. “The task of analyzing the imagery is quite difficult. It requires drawing down frames and going through it frame by frame.” He added that the images were passed to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority as soon the signs of floating debris were discovered.
“This is a lead — it is probably the best lead we have right now,” he said. “They are credible sightings. The indications to me are of objects that are of reasonable size and awash with water.” A senior American investigator said he was “highly skeptical” that the debris spotted on satellite came from an airplane. “I’ve seen the pictures,” he said. “Those pieces are pretty damned big.”
He said that part of the south Indian Ocean was liable to contain some large debris, such as containers lost overboard from merchant vessels. An Australian Air Force plane has been asked to drop marker buoys near the objects, which searchers can keep in sight to track the pieces as currents move them. Four other aircraft and several ships were rerouted to the area, Mr. Young said. In a crash, he said, the airplane usually breaks up into smaller pieces. 
The area is four hours’ flying time from Perth for the Royal Australian Air Force Orion P-3, which allows the surveillance aircraft to spend two hours of search time at the site. The Royal Australian Navy ship Success, which is on its way to the area, “is well equipped to recover any objects located and proven to be from MH370,” the maritime authority said in a statement. If he is correct, it would be the second large piece of debris that was initially identified as possibly being part of the plane and turned out to be something else; a few days after the crash, the Chinese released a satellite picture of something they said might be wreckage from a Boeing 777. It was also too big.
The satellite images, which were released to the public, are dated March 16. “The imagery has been progressively captured by satellites passing over various areas,” John McGarry, air commodore of the Royal Australian Air Force, said at the Canberra news conference. “The task of analyzing the imagery is quite difficult. It requires drawing down frames and going through it frame-by-frame.” He added that the imagery was passed to the Australian maritime authority as soon the signs of floating debris were discovered. The investigator also said that a review of the cargo manifest showed that the plane was carrying lithium batteries, but that this was not unusual, and that the plane’s pattern of movements, as recorded by radar, “wouldn’t fit with any known inflight fire we’ve had to date.”
After Mr. Abbott made his statement, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia also issued a statement, saying that the two leaders had spoken about the sighting. But after nearly two weeks of almost daily hopes that brightened and then dimmed, the Malaysian prime minister urged caution. Hishammuddin Hussein, the defense minister of Malaysia, which is in overall charge of the search and investigation into the plane’s disappearance, said at a news conference near Kuala Lumpur later on Thursday that the information from Australia had been “actually corroborated to a certain extent from other satellites.” He did not elaborate.
“Australian officials have yet to establish whether these objects are indeed related” to the missing plane, he said in the emailed statement. Cmdr. William J. Marks, spokesman for the Seventh Fleet, said on Wednesday that if the ocean search turned up suspected debris, aircraft would fly over it at close range and use electro-optical and infrared camera equipment, which can discern objects much more sharply than a naked human eye, to identify it. The aircraft, he added, “could provide the necessary information to lead salvage ships to the wreckage.”
Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defense minister, said at a news conference in Malaysia later Thursday that the information from Australia had been “actually corroborated to a certain extent from other satellites.” He did not elaborate. The P-8A Poseidon search plane was able to spend about three hours over the area where investigators believed the debris would be, and a similar flight was planned for Friday, Commander Marks said in an email on Friday.
In an email to reporters, Commander Marks, the Seventh Fleet spokesman, said he had “no information at this time about the Australian prime minister’s announcement.” The Success, the Australian naval vessel on its way to the area, “is well equipped to recover any objects located and proven to be from MH370,” the Australian maritime authority said in a statement.
The commander said on Wednesday that if the ocean search found suspected debris, aircraft would fly over it at close range and use electro-optical and infrared camera equipment, which can discern objects much more sharply than a naked human eye, to identify it. The aircraft, he added, “could provide the necessary information to lead salvage ships to the wreckage.” Tim Farrar, a former systems engineer in California who advises companies on satellite and telecommunications issues, said the investigators appeared to have identified the target area using the plane’s final satellite signal and assuming that it was flying a straight course at a steady speed toward the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
Tim Farrar, a former systems engineer in California who advises companies on satellite and telecommunications issues, said the investigators appeared to have identified the broad area where the jet may have fallen into the southern Indian Ocean by building from the plane’s final “ping” signals to a satellite and using the bleak assumption that it was flying at an undeviating speed toward the Southern Ocean and, ultimately, Antarctica. “If debris from the plane is found in the predicted area, that suggests that the plane would not have been under active pilot control during the last few hours of flight,” Mr. Farrar said in an interview. “The assumption is if you’re going off into the Southern Ocean, presumably the pilots were incapacitated by a fire or something, and it was flying on autopilot until the fuel ran out.”
“If debris from the plane is found in the predicted area, that suggests that the plane would not have been under active pilot control during the last few hours of flight,” Mr. Farrar said in an interview. “The assumption is if you’re going off into the Southern Ocean, presumably the pilots were incapacitated by a fire or something, and it was flying on autopilot until the fuel ran out. That’s sort of implicit in the Southern Ocean assumption.”
As the possible break in what had been a fruitless search was being pursued, the Malaysian authorities were seeking help from the F.B.I. to help retrieve deleted computer data from a homemade flight simulator belonging to the captain of the missing plane, their first request for high-level American assistance in solving the mystery.
Malaysian and American investigators have been focusing on the pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, though they have not excluded other explanations for the plane’s disappearance.
“It’s all focused on the pilots,” said a senior American law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his access to information about the investigation. “We, and they, have done everything we could on the passengers, and haven’t found a thing.”
The F.B.I. will relay the contents of the simulator’s hard drive to agents and analysts in the United States who specialize in retrieving deleted computer files.
“Right now, it’s the best chance we have of finding something,” the law enforcement official said. Unless the pilot used very sophisticated technology to erase files, he added, the F.B.I. will most likely be able to recover them and see whether they contain any clues.
More than two dozen nations are searching for any trace of the missing airliner, a challenge that has seemed to grow more complicated and more contentious with each passing day.
As the geographic scope of the search has widened, Australia as well as China, India, France, the United States and other nations have offered naval ships, surveillance planes, satellites and experts to Malaysia, which is leading the effort. The investigators face a formidable set of mechanical, avionic and satellite communication puzzles.
Flight 370 was about 40 minutes into a six-hour trip when it suddenly stopped communicating with air traffic controllers and turned far off course, cutting back across Peninsular Malaysia, over the Strait of Malacca and toward the Indian Ocean. Military radar tracked it for a while, but the operators did not seek to identify the plane or alert anyone. A satellite over the ocean picked up automated signals for several more hours — facts not released publicly for days after the plane vanished.
The satellite “pings” led investigators to conclude that the plane had made its way to some point along one of two long, arcing corridors that together embrace 2.24 million square nautical miles of sea and land.
Evidence suggests that whoever diverted the plane knew how to disable its communications systems and program course changes, and the data recorded in the pilot’s flight simulator may shed light on whether he was involved. But building and using flight simulators at home is a popular hobby among aviation enthusiasts, and the deletion of data from Mr. Zaharie’s simulator may have been routine housekeeping. Mr. Zaharie did not keep his simulator a secret: He posted a video on YouTube more than a year ago showing him sitting in front of it.
The computer search could reveal impulses or plans linked to the plane’s disappearance. But the investigators could also conclude that Mr. Zaharie deleted files just as the average person does to clean out a computer.