A new object was spotted by Chinese satellites in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from the missing Malaysian jetliner, as the search for the plane entered its third week on Saturday. “The object is 22.5 metres long and 13 metres wide,” Malaysian Defence and Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala lumpur, adding China is sending ships to verify. China later said the satellite images showing the “floating object” are dated around Tuesday noon (March 18).
The object was spotted about 120 km southwest from a location where possible debris was sighted by another satellite on March 16 in the remote ocean off western Australia. Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph in a transcript reportedly revealed the final 54 minutes of conversation between the pilots of the missing Malaysian airliner and the control tower.
The transcript of the conversation between the co-pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Fariq Abdul Hamid, and the control tower begins at 12.15 am March 8 from the time the aircraft was taxiing on the runway to its last known position above the South China Sea at 1.19 am with the final message by Hamid being “all right, good night.”
The investigators claim that the conversation began from a point when the flight was already sabotaged and their reports state that the conversation seemed “perfectly routine” but however, two odd features stood out. The first odd feature pointed out was that at 1.07 am the message saying that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet was repeated twice with an interval of six minutes.
The Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) also sent out the last message at the exact same time before being disabled after 30 minutes which might be a deliberate attempt. Investigators believe that the ACARS was switched off even before Hamid’s final, 1.19 am farewell. The second odd feature stated by the investigators was that the plane’s disappearance is not an accident. After the loss of communication, the flight turned west at a point where the handover from air traffic controllers in Kuala lumpur to those in Ho Chi Minh City took place.
“If I was going to steal the aeroplane, that would be the point I would do it. There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers. It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Stephen Buzdygan, a former British Airways pilot who flew Boeing 777s, as saying. “The location of the suspicious object is along the southern corridor missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might have taken and about 120 km south by west from the location of a suspicious object Australia found before,” State-run Xinhua news agency said.
Malaysia Airlines Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200 with 239 people on board, including five Indians and one Indo-Canadian, disappeared from radar screen on March 8, an hour after taking off from Kuala lumpur. This is the second imagery provided by Chinese satellites in search of the plane. Earlier, Satellite pictures of some objects floating in the South China Sea were proved wrong as the debris could not be located.
Meanwhile, two objects located by Australian satellites floating in the Indian Ocean, nearly 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth, could not be located despite intense aerial search for three days. The Australian officials believe they could have been sunk. At least six search flights were involved in the search operations, including two private jets. Two Australian planes returned without spotting anything. Twenty six nations are involved in the search for flight MH370.
India, Cambodia, and Kazakhstan have confirmed that their radar data had shown no sighting of the plane in their airspaces. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong lei said China had informed Malaysia and Australia about the new object. “China hopes that these data will be helpful for search and rescue efforts,” Hong was quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying. It still needs further analysis and verification on whether the suspicious floating object is related to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, Hong said adding that China’s sea and air search-and-rescue forces are heading for the southern Indian Ocean.