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 Maritime Safety Authority said Fridays search of the area, which is 2,500 kilometers, or 1,500 miles, southwest of Perth on Australias west coast, would include four military aircraft, including two Royal Australian Air Force Orion planes. A total of six merchant ships have assisted in the search, the authority said.
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. 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 companys 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.
This handout from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows the satellite images of the two objects that officials say could possibly be related to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
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. 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 Authoritys 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 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.
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