A Chinese satellite spotted a possible piece of the missing ¬Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 in the same remote area of the Indian Ocean that has been the focus of the search for the vanished jet.
The 74- by 43-foot object was detected Tuesday, but the discovery was not announced until Saturday.
It could be one of the same two objects that an Australian satellite picked up just 75 miles to the north March 16, or it could be a third piece of debris.
And very early Sunday a wooden pallet with strapping belts — equipment commonly used in the airline and shipping industries — was found in the search area, CNN said, quoting an unidentified Australian official.
“We have now had a number of very credible leads, and there is increasing hope — no more than hope, no more than hope — that we might be on the road discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot said as the search resumed Sunday.
The Australians have been searching for Flight 370 in one of the most remote places on Earth, a virtually landless 14,000-square-mile swath of ocean 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia — to no avail.
Word of the new lead in the hunt for the Boeing 777 was dramatically delivered to Malaysian officials during a Saturday news briefing on the search for the plane, which took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 8 and hasn’t been seen since.
China’s SASTIND has detected suspected a floating object 22m-long and 13m-wide in southern Indian Ocean.#MH370 pic.twitter.com/ngy1Wo12YL
— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) March 22, 2014
Eight planes from the US, New Zealand, Australia and China were set to scour the seas Sunday, Australian officials said.
The area of ocean is consistent with the plane’s location at the time of its last automatic “ping” to a tracking satellite.
Confirmation that wreckage from Flight 370 was floating in such a remote area would lend credence to speculation that a pilot could have steered it into the middle of the ocean in a suicide plot, or that no one was at the controls.
Also Saturday, Britain’s Daily Mail revealed that a mystery call to the doomed jet’s captain — made shortly before take-off — came from a burner phone purchased by a woman in Kuala Lumpur who used a false identity.
The call to veteran pilot Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, lasted two minutes, the Mail reported.
Investigators are probing all of the plane’s 12-member crew, seizing their bank statements, credit-card bills, phone records and computer and Internet history, The Sunday Times of London reported.
But the probe is focusing most intensely on Shah and his co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, and is exploring whether “domestic issues” made either man vulnerable to psychological or financial pressure, the paper said, citing sources in Malaysia who would not elaborate.
And Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported that “senior sources in the investigation” believe the most plausible explanation is that one or both pilots hijacked the flight, steering it ¬toward a watery doom.
“It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search ¬until we’re absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile — and that day is not in sight,” said Warren Truss, Australia’s acting prime minister.
Meanwhile, tempers again flared among the frustrated relatives of the missing 239 passengers, with some accusing Malaysian officials of ¬lying about the fate of Flight 370.
When those officials declined to take questions from the relatives Saturday, the family members erupted in fury.
“You’ve seen now how the Malaysian government treats us!” screamed one relative of a passenger. “How do you think they will treat our families on board the flight?” d has budgeted another $1.5 million for the efforts.