122 objects spotted in jet search
Satellite images reveal debris believed to be from MH370
NEW satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days, while planes scouring the frigid seas yesterday also reported seeing what-looked like wreckage.
The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of kilometres off course.
“We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris,” Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. “It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370.”
The latest images were captured by France’s Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 objects in a 400km² area of ocean, Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from 1m to 23m in length, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the communications systems.
A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2 500km southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage yesterday after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.
“The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be but it’s closer to Australia than anywhere else,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country’s parliament in a moment’s silence.
“A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be.”
Yesterday’s good weather was unlikely to last, in an area renowned among mariners for high winds and big waves.
“This is only going to be a narrow window of opportunity by the looks of things, because another weather system is moving in for Thursday [today], which looks like that will bring an increase in winds again and also lead to a reduction in visibility through the rain associated with the cold front,” Neil Bennett, a spokesman for Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said.
Meanwhile, a US law firm says it expects to represent families of more than half of the passengers on board the missing plane against the carriers and Boeing, alleging the plane had crashed due to mechanical failure.
Chicago’s Ribbeck Law has filed a petition for discovery against Boeing and Malaysian Airlines in a Cook County, Illinois, circuit court.
The petition is meant to secure evidence of possible design and manufacturing defects that might have contributed to the disaster, the law firm said.
Though both Boeing and Malaysian Airlines were named in the filing, the focus of the case will be on Boeing, Ribbeck’s lawyers said, as they believed the incident was caused by mechanical failure. – Reuters