US navy ships join search for Malaysian jet
The US navy has ordered a ship to the Indian Ocean to search for a missing Malaysian airliner amid reports the plane kept "pinging" a satellite after losing radar contact.
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The focus of search efforts shifted on Thursday from the South China Sea after the White House said "new information" indicated that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 on board, may have gone down to the west in the Indian Ocean.
Malaysian authorities expanded their search for the plane westward towards India, based on reports that it could have flown for hours after it last made contact.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian transport minister, said his government was asking for radar data from India and other neighbouring countries.
For its part, India plans to deploy aircraft and ships in the southern section of the sea, a senior Indian official told the Associated Press news agency.
In Washington DC, Jay Carney, White House spokesman, said: "It's my understanding that based on some new information that's not necessarily conclusive, but new information, an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean.
"We are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy."
Destroyer deployed
Separately, a US navy official, referring to a guided-missile destroyer initially deployed to the Gulf of Thailand. said: "The USS Kidd is transiting the Strait of Malacca en route to the Indian Ocean."
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An additional US aircraft, a P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, also was headed to the area, where a P-3 Orion was already aiding the search effort, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
A second American destroyer, the USS Pinckney, remains in the Gulf of Thailand, and it was unclear if it would remain in the international search effort after this week, officials said.
The moves followed reports that the Boeing 777 airliner's communication system continued to "ping" a satellite for a number of hours after the plane disappeared off radar.
The signal came from the jet's "airplane health management system" that provides a flow of data on the airliner's operations, according to the Wall Street Journal and ABC News.
The newspaper later retracted one detail in its original report, which had incorrectly stated that invesigators were looking at signals from the plane's Rolls-Royce engines.
The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur nearly a week ago bound for Beijing, but vanished off radar somewhere across the Gulf of Thailand.
The possibility that the plane kept flying for several hours raised a host of new questions about the fate of the airliner and deepened the mystery surrounding the jet's disappearance.
The international hunt initially focused on the South China Sea east of Malaysia, along the plane's intended route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Malaysian officials have said the airliner may have doubled back after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
Faint electronic pulses
US officials said on Wednesday that American military spy satellites detected no sign of a mid-air explosion when the plane went missing at 1:30am Malaysian local time on Saturday.
So far, communications satellites have picked up faint electronic pulses from the flight since it went missing, but the signals have given no indication about where the jet was headed nor its technical condition, a source close to the investigation told Reuters news agency.
The "pings" equated to an indication that the aircraft's maintenance troubleshooting systems were ready to communicate with satellites if needed.
However, no links were opened because Malaysia and other airlines had not subscribed to the full trouble-shooting service, the source said.
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Planes were sent on Thursday to search an area off the southern tip of Vietnam where Chinese satellite images published on a Chinese government website reportedly showed three suspected floating objects. They saw only ocean.
"There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing," Hishamuddin said.
Compounding the frustration, he later said the Chinese embassy had notified that the images were released by mistake and did not show any debris.
Dozens of ships and aircraft from 12 nations have been searching the Gulf of Thailand and the strait, but no confirmed trace has been found.
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The search area has grown to 92,600sq km.
Experts say that if the plane crashed into the ocean then some debris should be floating on the surface even if most of the jet is submerged.
Past experience shows that finding the wreckage can take weeks or even longer, especially if the location of the plane was in doubt.