(CNN) -- [Breaking news update at
6:50 a.m.]
A New Zealand air force P-3 patrol plane has spotted
"objects" in the new Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search area, the
Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Friday. The plane is returning to
Perth and the agency is awaiting images of the discovery for analysis.
[Original story, posted at 6:19 a.m.]
Australia: New search area for Flight 370 is 'most
credible lead'
(CNN) -- Nearly three weeks after the disappearance of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the focus of the hunt for the missing passenger
jet has moved yet again.
Search teams have shifted to a different part of the
southern Indian Ocean after Australian authorities said they received "a
new credible lead" about the jetliner's most likely last movements.
An analysis of radar data led investigators to move the
search to an area 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the northeast of where
efforts had been focused previously, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority
said Friday.
 |
|
Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal
Australian Air Force aircraft during a search operation for Malaysian Airlines
Flight 370 on Thursday, March 27. The plane has been missing since March 8. On
March 24, the Prime Minister of Malaysia announced that analysis of satellite
data pointed to the flight ending in the southern Indian Ocean.
|
It described the new information, which indicated the errant
jetliner didn't fly as far south as previously thought, as "the most
credible lead to where debris may be located."
That means the huge, isolated areas of the ocean that ships
and planes had combed for more than a week -- and where various satellites
detected objects that might be debris from the missing plane -- are no longer
of interest.
 |
|
People in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, light candles during a
ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27.
|
"We have moved on from those search areas," said
John Young, general manager of emergency response for the Australian maritime
authority.
The new search area is "considerable" and
conditions there "remain challenging," acting Malaysian Transport
Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters Friday.
 |
|
Crew members of the Chinese icebreaking ship Xuelong scan
the Indian Ocean during a search for the missing jet on Wednesday, March 26.
|
The sudden change of geographic focus is the latest twist in
an investigation that has so far failed to establish why Flight 370 flew
dramatically off course or exactly where the plane and the 239 people it was
carrying ended up. "To me, it's not a game changer, it's a reset,"
David Gallo of theWoods Hole
Oceanographic Institution said of the shifted search.
'We have not seen any debris'
Australian officials also played down the significance of
hundreds of possible objects detected by satellites in the previous search
region, some of which had been described by authorities as important leads.
"In regards to the old areas, we have not seen any
debris," Young said at a news briefing in Canberra, the Australian
capital. "And I would not wish to classify any of the satellite imagery as
debris, nor would I want to classify any of the few visual sightings that we
made as debris. That's just not justifiable from what we have seen."
Officials had repeatedly cautioned that the objects seen in
the satellite imagery could just be flotsam that had fallen off cargo ships.
But Hishammuddin said the new search area "could still
be consistent" with the idea that materials spotted in recent satellite
photos over the previous search area are connected to the plane. The materials
could have drifted in ocean currents, he said.
Some analysts raised their eyebrows at the search
coordinators' readiness to move away from the satellite sightings.
"Really? That much debris and we're not going to have a
look at it to see what that stuff might be?" said Gallo, who helped lead
the search for the flight recorders of Air France Flight 447, which crashed
into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Others lamented the amount of time, money and resources that
were spent sending planes and ships out to the now discounted areas for more
than a week.
"This is time that has been wasted, there's no
question," said CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien.
But Young and Hishammuddin disputed that suggestion.
Hishammuddin said that Malaysian authorities have ensured that
"no stones are unturned" in the search.
"I don't think we would've done anything different from
what we have done," he said.
The previous searches were based on the information
authorities "had at the time," Young said.
"That's nothing unusual for search and rescue
operations," he said "And this actually happens to us all the time --
that new information may arise out of sequence with the search itself."
Plane traveled faster
The latest data, based on an analysis of radar on the night
Flight 370 disappeared, suggest the aircraft was traveling faster than
previously estimated before it dropped off radar, Australian authorities said.
The radar data concerns the phase of the flight during which
the plane turned off its original path over the South China Sea and headed west
over the Malay Peninsula out into the Strait of Malacca, authorities said.
The faster speed means the plane is thought to have burned
more fuel than previously calculated, shortening the possible distance it flew
south into the Indian Ocean.
CNN safety analyst David Soucie said it was "a good
sign" that international aviation experts analyzing the radar and
satellite data related to the plane had adjusted their assumptions.
"Assumptions are the key to all of this," he said.
"If you assume something and you end up with a final conclusion, you have
to constantly review that."
Less remote, better weather
The new search area is closer to the Australian continent,
allowing planes to spend longer flying over it as they hunt for traces of the
missing passenger jet, which disappeared March 8 over Southeast Asia.
"We will certainly get better time on scene,"
Young said.
The new zone is also farther north, moving search teams away
from latitudes known for difficult weather conditions. Search efforts in the
old areas were disrupted twice this week by bad weather.
Conditions in the more northerly zone are "likely to be
better more often than we've seen in the past," Young said.
They may also be better for taking satellite images, he
said. The Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation has directed
satellites to capture images of the new zone.
But searchers are running out of time to find the plane's
impact spot and start listening for the flight data recorder's locator beacon,
which is likely to stop working in early April.
Hishammuddin said Malaysian authorities will look into the
"possibility of deep-sea search and salvage" after that time.
Aircraft searching new zone
But the area in question remains vast -- roughly 319,000
square kilometers (123,000 square miles) -- and remote -- about 1,850
kilometers (1,150 miles) west of Perth, the western Australian city that's the hub
for search operations.
The waters there are also deep, between 2,000 and 4,000
meters (6,500 and 13,000 feet).
Ten search aircraft will fly over the area Friday. Six ships
involved in the search -- one Australian and five Chinese -- are headed there,
too. One Chinese patrol ship is already in the search area, authorities said.
American flight crews involved in the search aren't
frustrated or disillusioned by the sudden change in the search, said Cmdr.
William Marks of the Navy's U.S. 7th Fleet.
"For the pilots and the air crews, this is what they
train for," he said. "They understand it."
The focus of the search teams is "to get a visual
confirmation of debris," Marks said, noting that any parts of the plane
still afloat in the ocean could easily have moved 60-80 miles from where it hit
the water.
Vast, evolving search
The shifting hunt for the plane has spanned oceans and
continents over the past three weeks.
It started in the South China Sea between Malaysia and
Vietnam, where Flight 370 lost contact with air traffic controllers in the
early hours of March 8.
As news of the disappearance spread, authorities became
aware of Malaysian military radar data suggesting the plane might have turned
west after contact was lost. As a result, they expanded the search out into the
Strait of Malacca, off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula.
As those efforts proved fruitless, the search spread north
into the Andaman Sea and northern Indian Ocean.
It then ballooned dramatically after Malaysia announced on
March 15 that satellite data suggested the plane's last position was somewhere
along two huge arcs, one stretching northwest into the Asian landmass, the
other southwest into the Indian Ocean.
The total search area at that point reached almost 3 million
square miles.
On Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that
further analysis of satellite data had led authorities to conclude that the
plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean, far from land.
Malaysian officials told the families of those on board that
nobody would have survived. But many relatives have said that only the
discovery of wreckage from the plane will convince them of the fate of their
loved ones.
