Wall Street Journal – by ROSS KELLY and JAMES GLYNN
SYDNEY—An Australian-led operation is under way to determine whether objects located by satellite imagery in the southern Indian Ocean belong to missing Malaysia Airlines3786.KU -2.08% Flight 370.
“New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search,” Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott during a regular sitting of Parliament.
He added that there was no certainty the objects spotted were part of the aircraft, which disappeared en route to China from Malaysia on March 8.
Still, the apparent sighting is the strongest lead yet in a multinational search that has so far yielded little. Search crews found nothing after investigating objects identified in the South China Sea by a Chinese satellite last week, while oil slicks spotted near Vietnam turned out to be from ships in the area.
Mr. Abbott said he had informed Malaysia’s prime minister of the latest development.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the Australian reports were “credible,” but cautioned against jumping to conclusions. He said he hadn’t yet seen the satellite images, but hopes this is a “positive development.”
“You know how huge the area is,” he said. “We want to verify and we want to corroborate.”
The operation has dispatched four aircraft to an area about 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles) southwest of Perth, in Western Australia, to assess the finding, Australia’s maritime safety authority said Thursday.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority chief John Young says search planes have been sent over the southern Indian Ocean to identify two objects, spotted by satellite, that may relate to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
An Australian PC-3 Orion aircraft is already at the scene but hasn’t sighted any debris. Three other aircraft, including one from the U.S. and one from New Zealand, are expected to arrive later Thursday, along with a nearby merchant ship. Australia has also sent a warship to the zone to accommodate recovery of large items, if necessary.
The largest of the two objects spotted is thought to be up to 24 meters long, said John Young, a maritime authority official, to reporters.
“The indication to me is that they are objects of a reasonable size and probably awash with water, bobbing up and down on the surface,” he said.
Poor visibility may obstruct the search, Mr. Young said. “The weather isn’t playing the game with us. We may get a sighting, we may not,” he said.
He added that the satellite images were indistinct, and that the maritime authority still held “grave concerns” for the 239 passengers and crew on board the flight when it went missing.
“I must emphasize that these objects may be very difficult to locate and may not be related to the search,” Mr. Young said. He added that all resources in the search operation had, for now, been diverted to the area where the objects are thought to be located. The search effort also has deployed commercial satellites capable of taking high resolution photos have also been deployed toward the search effort to the area.
The international search operation involving dozens of countries had begun to focus on waters off Australia’s coast based on satellite communications that indicated the plane may have traveled along one of two long corridors.
A northern corridor that was identified stretched approximately from the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border to northern Thailand, while the southern one arced from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
If the plane had headed north it would have needed to fly through the airspace of several countries, an which would have raised the likelihood of detection, especially if it passed close to China or India, both of which have air-defense systems.
On Thursday, Mr. Young said Australia had received offers of help from other nations, without naming them. China had expressed interest in participating in the latest search, he added.
In Beijing, at the hotel that Malaysia Airlines has used as a help center, relatives of Flight 370 passengers gathered in a conference room to watch the televised news briefings on the latest updates. The mood shifted to somber disbelief at the Australian announcement over the satellite images. People left the room, with heads hanging. Four women cried.
“I don’t believe anything they say,” said Wen Wancheng, whose son was on the flight. “I just don’t believe this news,” said Mr. Wen, who is from the city of Jinan. He said he wants to believe that his son is still alive.
Emergency medics trailed some family members, many of whom looked worn down by the 12th day of waiting, into the conference room in the Metropark Lido Hotel. After days of vague and conflicting reports about the plane from airline representatives, some family members said they remain deeply skeptical of the information are being given.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” said Zhang Zhiliang, who walked out mid-briefing. He said he was frustrated that there is still no confirmed information. “There is nothing I want to watch, nothing I want to hear,” said Mr. Zhang. From the nearby city of Tianjin, Mr. Zhang said his 26-year-old cousin on the flight returning to Beijing after having been working in Malaysia.
In response to the news, China’s foreign ministry said its missions in Australia were keeping close contact with Australian authorities and offered assistance to help with the search.
Meanwhile Malaysia investigators have been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and recover data that had been deleted from a flight simulator taken from the home of the missing flight’s pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
After Malaysian officials determined that “deliberate action” was to blame for the disappearance of the flight, police have ramped up their investigations of the 52-year-old pilot and his co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 26. No authorities have accused either man, or anyone else on the plane, of wrongdoing.
Moreover, neither Malaysian nor foreign intelligence agencies have reported anything in the backgrounds of the pilot or co-pilot that suggests links to terrorist or criminal organizations, a person familiar with the situation has said.
Investigators similarly have failed to unearth any suspicious reports in background checks on passengers thus far.
————–
—Laurie Burkitt contributed to this article.
Write to Ross Kelly at ross.kelly@wsj.com and James Glynn at james.glynn@wsj.com
It’s the same satellite that spotted the Millennium Falcon in the Baltic Sea.