In hunt for lost jet, new sightings of debris are promising but inconclusive

Kuala Lumpur: The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumed in earnest Saturday as surveillance planes returned to the skies above a newly defined search area in the southern Indian Ocean and spotted floating debris for the second day in a row, and a flotilla of vessels began arriving in the zone to find and identify the objects, the Australian authorities said.

Crews on two of the ships pulled several items from the water, but investigators determined that the objects were not from the missing plane, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is overseeing the search.

With several more ships en route to the zone late Saturday, the naval contingent of the multinational search force trying to locate the Boeing 777-200 was expected to reach a total of nine vessels by Sunday. A frigate from the Royal Australian Navy was also heading to the area and was scheduled to arrive Tuesday.

Two aircraft flying over the new search area Saturday - one from the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force and the other from the Royal Australian Air Force - spotted floating debris. Five aircraft flying over the zone Friday also spotted unidentified objects.

But officials involved in the search, mindful of the amount of detritus adrift in the world's oceans, cautioned that the sightings were inconclusive on their own.

"It is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is ordinarily there," the Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement.

A new analysis of radar data from the morning of March 8, as Flight 370 veered off its intended route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and instead flew west over Peninsular Malaysia and then south over the Indian Ocean, compelled officials to shift the search area Friday to a zone about 1,100 miles west of Perth, Australia.

The analysis showed that the plane was moving faster than investigators had previously estimated and therefore it would have burned fuel more quickly and possibly fallen into the Indian Ocean farther north than previously believed, officials said.

The new search area is about 700 miles northeast of a zone that had been the focus of search efforts for most of the week.

The revision of the search area was based largely on work done by analysts from Boeing in Seattle, part of an international team of experts collaborating with Malaysian investigators, officials here said.

They arrived at their conclusions after re-evaluating the radar data and weighing other factors such as the amount of fuel on the plane when it took off from Kuala Lumpur and its altitude as it headed over the south Indian Ocean, Malaysian officials added, offering no further elaboration.

The new search area presents more favorable conditions for the search than the previous area, in part because it has less inclement weather and water conditions and is closer to Perth, the departure point for the search planes, officials said.

It is also only a fifth of the size of the previous search area, though still large: 123,000 square miles, or 319,000 square kilometers, which is roughly the size of New Mexico or Poland.

But Australian and Malaysian officials cautioned that the new zone also posed considerable challenges.

"We are trying to find small bits of wreckage in a vast ocean," said Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia. "And while we are throwing everything we have at it, the task goes on."

As the search was underway Saturday, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister, stopped by a hotel near Kuala Lumpur to meet with the relatives of Chinese citizens who were aboard Flight 370. The Malaysian government has endured withering criticism by the relatives and friends of Chinese passengers, who have accused it of withholding information about the disappearance of the plane and not doing enough to find it.

Speaking to reporters after the closed-door meeting, Hishammuddin said the families wanted assurances that the search-and-rescue operation would continue.

"As long as there is even a remote chance of a survivor, we will pray and do whatever it takes," he said, adding, "This is the hardest part of my life at the moment, meeting up with the families."

The recovery of debris from Flight 370 would provide final confirmation that the plane had crashed into the ocean and offer at least partial resolution to the families and friends of the passengers and crew.

It might also help solve perhaps the most enduring mystery of the plane's disappearance: What or who caused it to veer so sharply off course?

When debris is found quickly enough after a crash into the sea, investigators can trace its drift back to the impact site and conduct an underwater search to recover the plane's data recorders, or black boxes. But in the case of Flight 370, any debris, if found, might well have drifted hundreds of miles in the three weeks since the plane's disappearance and be of limited use in locating the crash site.

Still, recovered items from the plane might allow investigators to rule in or out certain events that could have precipitated a crash. Scorch marks, for example, might indicate that there was a fire, and the nature of any fire damage could offer clues about its source.

In the case of the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, the fact that the oxygen masks had not deployed and that life vests remained in their pouches indicated that those on board had not had time to prepare for an impact. Investigators also deduced from the damage that the plane hit the water at high speed, and they were able to tell which part of the plane hit the water first.

The approaching winter in the Southern Hemisphere could present serious obstacles, and some experts said that an underwater search-and-recovery mission would not be possible in the short term as weather conditions deteriorate.

But while the wreckage of the plane probably rests in cold, deep waters and is unlikely to degrade significantly in the coming months, experts said, the prospect of a delay would be hard for search experts to explain to the family members and to politicians who want to demonstrate that they are doing everything possible to find out what happened.