Malaysian Airlines flight has found what
is being described as three 'large,
floating objects' in the South China Sea,
UK Daily Mail reports
The potentially crucial
development comes on the fifth
day of the search for the Boeing
777 seems to corroborate the
testimony of a New Zealand oil
worker who claims to have
witnessed the crash of the
missing airplane early on Saturday
morning. Coni
It is also in the original search
area under the flight's original
search path and appears to
discount the theory that the
aircraft turned back towards
Malaysia and crashed hundreds of
miles away on the other side of
the Malaysian peninsula.
'IIt's where it's supposed to be,' Peter
Goelz, a former National Transportation
Safety Board managing director, told
CNN remarking on the 'great
skepticism' about reports the aircraft
carrying 239 passengers had turned
around to go back over Malaysia.
'I think they've got to get vessels and
aircraft there as quickly as humanly
possible.'
The new suspect crash site is about 140
miles from the flight's last radar contact
as broadcast by its transponder.
The three objects are large, measuring
43ft by 59ft, 46ft by 62ft and 79ft by
72ft.
'Chinese satellites have found smoke
and floating objects ... At present we
cannot confirm this is related to the
missing aircraft,' said Li Jiaxiang, China's
civil aviation chief on Thursday.
The site is also near where South China
Sea oil rig worker Michael Jerome
McKay today described seeing what he
believes to be the plane burning - in
one piece for 10-15 seconds - flying at a
high altitude slightly off from the
standard route of planes that cross the
sea shortly after the plane vanished.
'There was no lateral movement, so it
was either coming toward our location,
stationary, or going away from our
location,' he wrote in a letter to his
employers about the sighting on
Saturday and seen by ABC News.
Deputy general director of Vietnam's air
traffic management, Doan Huu Gia,
confirmed he had been sent an email
from McKay, the BBC reported.
'We received an email from a New
Zealander who works on one of the oil
rigs off Vung Tau.
'He said he spotted a burning [object] at
that location, some 300 km southeast of
Vung Tau.'
Vietnam has already searched the area
where Chinese satellites showed
objects that could be debris from a
missing Malaysia Airlines jet but a plane
has been sent to check the area again,
Vietnamese military officials said.
'We are aware and we sent planes to
cover that area over the past three
days,' Deputy Transport Minister Pham
Quy Tieu told Reuters. 'Today a
(military) plane will search the area
again,' he said.
And on Thursday morning Vietnamese
authorities said two military jets
searching for clues top the missing
Malaysia Airlines jet found no wreckage
at the location a Reuters journalist on
board said.
Aircraft repeatedly circled the area over
the South China Sea but were unable to
detect any objects, said the journalist,
who flew aboard a Antonov 26 cargo
plane for three hours.
China's State Administration for Science,
Technology and Industry for National
Defense announced the discovery of
the images in the area where rescuers
first started looking on Saturday - along
with other images of what appear to
show an oil slick tracing the surrounding
area.
The images were captured on March 9 -
the day after the plane went missing,
but were somehow not released until
Wednesday. There were 153 Chinese
nationals on board the flight.
China's State Administration for Science,
Technology and Industry for National
Defence gave no reason for the delay in
releasing the images - or why it has not
passed the pictures to Malaysian
authorities.
Culled from UK Daily Mail
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