Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- A son of the
pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has defended his father,
rejecting speculation about his possible role in the plane's disappearance.
"I've read everything online. But I've ignored all the
speculation. I know my father better," Ahmad Seth Zaharie, 26, said in an
interview published Thursday by the New Straits Times. He is the youngest son
of the 53-year-old pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
Investigators have so far been unable to establish why the
passenger jet flew far off course on the night it vanished from radar screens
almost three weeks ago.
The search efforts were severely hampered by bad weather
Thursday, while Thai authorities reported detecting hundreds more objects that
could be related to the plane in satellite images.
'I understand him'
The pilot and first officer of the plane have come under
particular scrutiny, with a range of speculative theories proffered for why one
or both of them might have diverted it from its scheduled flight path to
Beijing.
Some of the wilder speculation suggested Zaharie might have
hijacked the plane as a political act.
"We may not be as close as he travels so much. But I
understand him," Ahmad said of his father in the interview, which was
conducted Tuesday.
Ahmad is the first member of the Zaharie's close family to
speak publicly to the news media about the plane's disappearance.
No 'smoking gun'
Comments from government officials on the investigation so
far support the young man's view.
A senior Malaysian government official on Wednesday told CNN
law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes that authorities have found nothing
negative in 19 days of investigating the two pilots that leads them to any
motive, be it political, suicidal or extremist.
And an ongoing FBI review of the two pilots' hard drives,
including Zaharie's flight simulator, has not turned up a "smoking
gun," a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN.
"They have accessed the data," the official said.
"There is nothing that's jumping out and grabbing us right now."
Officials have so far not reported anything suspicious in
their investigations into the 10 other crew members and 227 passengers on board
the plane.
American investigators continue to be baffled by the plane's
disappearance, with one U.S. official saying, "I don't think there is a
prevailing theory. There are counterarguments to every theory right now."
Air search halted
With little sign of progress in the investigation on land,
search efforts at sea were hampered Thursday by another bout of bad weather.
The conditions brought an early end to the day's aerial
search for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean, but five ships in the area
are trying to keep up the hunt for debris despite the difficult conditions.
All the planes that had flown out to the search zone are
returning to Perth, the western Australian city where they set out from, the
Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. It initially reported that the ships
were leaving the search area, too, but later said they would stay.
The search teams that have been out over the remote area of
ocean Thursday have been "beaten up," said Lt. Comm. Adam Schantz of
the U.S. Navy.
The visibility is almost zero, with clouds reaching down to
the surface of the water, as well as severe turbulence and icing, he said.
"It's very cold," said Capt. Allison Norris, who
is in charge of the HMAS Success, the Australian navy ship in the search area.
"We rotate the lookouts through every hour and make sure that they are
appropriately dressed to combat the very cold conditions down here."
Early Thursday afternoon, more than 60% of the search area
was experiencing a mixture of low visibility, strong thunderstorms and powerful
winds, said CNN International Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.
Hopes of resuming
Flight crews hope to be back in the air Friday if the
weather clears, Schantz said. But the Australian maritime agency said it
expects conditions to remain bad for another 24 hours.
This is the second time this week that operations have been
hampered by harsh conditions in the isolated patch of ocean roughly 1,500 miles
southwest of Perth. No search missions took place on Tuesday because of stormy
weather.
The delay is likely to prolong an already protracted hunt
for the missing Boeing 777, which disappeared March 8 over Southeast Asia with
239 people on board.
Citing an analysis of satellite data, Malaysian authorities
say the plane ended its errant journey in the southern Indian Ocean. But they
still haven't been able to establish why it lost contact with air traffic
control and flew so far off course.
The suspension of the aerial search dims hopes that the
teams might soon be able to pinpoint objects spotted in satellite images of the
ocean captured over the past two weeks.
On Wednesday, Malaysia said it had received satellite images
showing 122 potential objects floating in the ocean, not far from other
satellite sightings that could be related to the missing passenger jet.
Adding to the list, a Thai satellite spotted 300
"pieces of floating objects potentially linked" to the missing plane
in broadly the same region of the southern Indian Ocean, a Thai official said
Thursday.
The Thai satellite captured the images on Monday, but it
took several days to process them and pass them on to the Malaysian government,
said Kampanart Deeudomchan, an official at Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space
Technology Development Agency.
Analysts have said the detection of possible objects is an
encouraging sign, but so far nothing conclusively linked to the plane has been
found.
"The type of wreckage or object that we're looking for
is so close to the water line that now radars would not be able to pick it up,"
Norris of the HMAS Success told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "So we are very
reliant on lookouts who use binoculars and night vision glasses to scan the
horizon and scan the area around the ship while we conduct our search
pattern."
The forecast from Friday morning through Saturday shows much
improved conditions in the search zone, CNN's Javaheri said.
"Scattered clouds should be expected," he said.
"But the winds and seas will both calm considerably, giving a rare a
stretch of generally favorable conditions for this region during this time of
year."
