DHAKA: Australian officials said on Sunday that a wooden cargo pallet along with belts or straps have been spotted in the remote Indian Ocean by one of the aircraft deployed in the hunt for a missing Malaysian jet.

The objects were seen by a civilian aircraft assisting in the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 on Saturday in what the Australian Maritime Safety Authority confirmed was the ‘first visual sighting in the search so far’.

‘Part of the description was a wooden pallet and a number of other items which were nondescript around it and some belts of some different colours around it as well, strapping belts of different lengths,’ AMSA aircraft operations coordinator Mike Barton said, reports The Straits Times.

‘We tried to refind that yesterday, one of the New Zealand aircraft, and unfortunately they didn’t find it. That`s the nature of it - you only have to be off by a few hundred metres in a fast-travelling aircraft,’ he told a press briefing.

Barton said Sunday’s search, which will involve four military and four civilian aircraft, would return to the area to try and zero in on the objects again.

Aviation experts had advised that wooden pallets were quite commonly used to pack goods in planes, Barton added, describing it as a ‘possible lead’.

BDST: 1636 HRS, MAR 23, 2014