MH370 Missing Aircraft Investigation -Search history.

Sometimes the object spotted in the water is a snarled fishing line. Or a buoy. Or something that might once have been the lid to an ice box. Not once - not yet at least - has it been a clue.

Anticipation has repeatedly turned into frustration in the search for signs of Flight MH370 as objects spotted from planes in a new search area west of Australia have turned out to be garbage. Not only is the rubbish a time-wasting distraction for air and sea crews searching for debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished March 8, it also points to wider problems in the world's oceans.

Wing Commander Andy Scott, of New Zealand's defence force, said the crew in a P-3 Orion scouring the ocean for Flight 370 on Saturday spotted about 70 objects over four hours.

Three were deemed worthy of further investigation, he said, but none turned out to be from the missing plane. One was probably a fishing line, he said, another was the suspected ice box lid, and a third was some unidentified brown and orange material.

"From my experience, it can be quite a roller coaster," he said. "You sight these search objects, and think you've made a breakthrough, and then you have to get back to your routine."

Missing Plane: Material Washes Ashore In Oz


Investigators hope the discovery of objects six miles off the coast will help unravel the mystery of flight MH370.

11:19am UK, Wednesday 23 April 2014
The undersea drone is near the end of its first mission

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Officials searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane say material has washed ashore off the coast of Western Australia.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is now examining photographs of the objects, which have been secured by police in the region, to establish whether they are linked to flight MH370.
Authorities said the images had also been passed to investigators in Malaysia.
Relatives are urging governments not to give up the search The development came after Australia pledged to keep searching for the plane despite no sign of wreckage after almost seven weeks.
Bad weather is continuing to hamper the search with aircraft grounded for the second day due to heavy rain, low clouds and rough seas.
An undersea drone is nearing the end of its first full mission and Australian PM Tony Abbott says the search strategy may change if seabed scans taken by the US Navy drone fails to find a trace of MH370, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The deep search covers an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal "We may well re-think the search but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery," he said.
"The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time."
The Bluefin-21 drone is a key component in the search after the detection of audio signals, or "pings", believed to be from the plane's black box flight .
Relatives are asking Mr Hussein to investigate old media reports The search co-ordination centre said the robotic submarine had so far covered more than 80% of the 120 square mile (310 square kilometres) seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor, but failing to find anything of interest.
The 2.8 mile (4.5-kilometre) deep search area is a circle 12 miles (20 km) wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane's black boxes. The batteries powering those signals are now dead.
Both Australia and Malaysia are under growing pressure to show what lengths they are prepared to go to in order to give closure to the grieving families of those on board.
In a sign of the families' growing desperation for answers, a group purporting to be relatives of the missing flight's passengers wrote a letter to Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein, urging the government to investigate old media reports that the plane landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"It is high time that the government should start thinking out of the box by exploring and re-examining all leads, new and old," said the letter, published on Facebook on Wednesday.