‘Several objects’ spotted in missing jet search

PERTH // A Chinese aircraft flying over the search zone for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 yesterday spotted several objects floating in the sea, including two bearing colours of the airline, but it was not immediately clear whether they were related to the investigation, officials said.

A Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 spotted three floating objects, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said, a day after several planes and ships combing a new search area closer to mainland Australia saw several other objects.

Malaysia’s defence minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said there was no new information on the objects spotted on Friday.

“I’ve got to wait to get the reports on whether they have retrieved those objects ... Those will give us some indication,” said Mr Hishammuddin as he visited relatives of the flight’s passengers at a hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

The Australian maritime safety authority (Amsa) said the objects could not be verified or discounted as being from Flight 370 until they were relocated and recovered by ships. “It is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is ordinarily there. At least one distinctive fishing object has been identified,” the agency said.

The three objects spotted by the Chinese plane yesterday were white, red and orange in colour, the Xinhua report said. White and red were among the colours of the exterior of the missing Boeing 777.

An image captured a day earlier by a New Zealand plane showed a white rectangular object floating in the sea, but it was not clear whether it was related to the missing jet.

Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, and investigators have been puzzled over what happened aboard the plane, with speculation ranging from equipment failure and a botched hijacking to terrorism or an act by one of the pilots.

Newly analysed satellite data shifted the search zone on Friday, raising hopes searchers may be closer to getting physical evidence that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.

The newly targeted zone is nearly 1,130 kilometres north-east of sites the searchers have criss-crossed for the past week.

* Associated Press