The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 shifted to another section of the southern Indian Ocean on Friday after new analysis by investigators indicated that the aircraft was traveling faster than previously thought.
The new lead comes from analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost, AMSA said.
Those data show that the aircraft traveled at a higher speed than investigators thought, therefore used more fuel and possibly traveled less far south, according to the Australians.
The new search area is 680 miles northeast of where planes and ships have been scouring the waters for any sign of the plane.
It is also four times as large as where the search team was looking Thursday, expanding the area being covered from 48,500 square miles to 198,200 square miles, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).
Australian officials said the new lead was based on continued analysis of information pieced together from radar and satellite data, as observers try to find the plane, which had 239 people on board when it strayed far from its intended path to Beijing on March 8.
* Source: Australian Maritime Safety Authority - The green crosshatched rectangle indicates the new search area. The prior search areas are in gray below.
The Australian-led search has spent several days trying to track down debris picked up by various satellites, which have offered the strongest leads in the hunt for the plane. But so far, observers on low-flying planes and on ships have come up short.
On Monday, a Thai satellite spotted at least 300 floating objects in the southern Indian Ocean, where authorities say the plane went down almost three weeks ago, a Thai official said Thursday.
The images were taken by the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, a Thai space research agency, and show objects more than
1,600 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, said Anond Snidvongs, executive director of the agency.
“I wouldn’t say the debris is from the Malaysia Airlines flight,” Anond said by telephone from Bangkok, adding that analysts could not be certain. “We just spotted a lot of floating objects.”
He said the items were as small as 6 1/2 feet and as long as 52 1/2 feet. They were seen about 124 miles from where French satellites detected a group of more than
100 objects earlier in the week.
The effort to physically locate debris from the aircraft was hampered Thursday as planes set out in the morning, only to turn back a few hours later because of weather conditions. Five ships continued scouring the section of the southern Indian Ocean where authorities think the flight ended. On Friday morning, the search resumed again with 10 aircraft.
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