DHAKA: Search planes are on their way to the site of possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airline flight thousands of kilometres south-west of Perth.

Authorities yesterday identified two objects on satellite images almost 2,500 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, but bad weather hampered initial searches by an RAAF Orion plane.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the search efforts, says five aircraft will be sent to the site today while a merchant ship is already in the area and another will arrive tonight.

AMSA says the two objects on the satellite imaging have been assessed as "credible", but cautioned that they could be unrelated to flight MH370, which disappeared almost two weeks ago with 239 people on board, including six Australians.

Two-thirds of the those on board the flight are Chinese, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he has spoken with Chinese president Xi Jinping by phone from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, where he in on an official state visit.

Abbott says Xi Jinping is "devastated" and Australia will do its duty to follow all possible leads.

An RAAF Orion departed Perth for the four-hour flight out to the search zone this morning, and another Orion and a Gulfstream jet were due to follow it.

One of the Orions was carrying an ABC cameraman on board.

The satellite images from commercial company DigitalGlobe were taken on Sunday and show what authorities say are two objects in the water, one as large as 24 metres in length.

Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss says authorities have already dropped buoys in the search area to analyse the effects of the wind and currents to pinpoint where the objects may have drifted since then.

A third RAAF Orion and a US Navy Poseidon will join the search later today as authorities stagger the flights to maximise the search time during daylight hours.

The Poseidon has advanced radar to detect underwater objects.

The aircraft each spend about two hours searching before flying back to Western Australia to refuel.

A reporter aboard the US Navy Poseidon told America`s ABC network that their sweeps of the area yesterday only turned up a freighter and several pods of dolphins.

"This is a plane that gets very close to the water. Most of the time we were skimming at about 300 feet (about 90 metres) above the water - you could see a basketball if it were in the water," he said.

"Plus they had high-tech radar, sweeping 16 miles (about 25km) on each side of the plane. If there was something there, this plane surely would have spotted it."
Bad weather hampered initial search after imagery was released

An Orion was unable to locate the debris yesterday evening because of limited visibility from cloud and rain.

"The weather conditions were such that we were unable to see for very much of the flight today [Thursday] but the other aircraft that are searching, they may have better conditions," Flight Lieutenant Chris Birrer told reporters.
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The weather bureau has forecast improved conditions today.

Former Australian Navy chief Admiral Chris Barrie says the larger object in the satellite imager could be a shipping container lost at sea.

"The 24 metres sort of rang that bell in my mind," he said.

He says he expects the search for debris from the missing plane will last days or even weeks.

DigitalGlobe said the sheer number of images it captures contributed to a delay in identifying the two objects.

Spokesman Turner Brinton says the company`s five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometres of Earth imagery each day.

"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," he said.

An Australian space engineer has warned against putting too much faith in the images, saying satellites are limited in what they can do.

"These are just very expensive cameras flying in the sky and they regularly go over particular spots, but you can`t send them anywhere," he said.

"They`re in a fixed orbit and you`ve got to tell them in advance where to take the imagery.

"So expecting a satellite to have known where the plane was is not very useful."

Yesterday Malaysia`s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the images had been "corroborated to a certain extent" by other satellites, making them more credible than previous leads.

Source: abc.net.au
BDST: 0947 HRS, MAR 21, 2014