PERTH, Australia — China released Saturday a new satellite image of a large floating object possibly linked to missing Malaysian Flight MH370, boosting search efforts as anger with the pace of the operation boiled over among Chinese relatives in Beijing. The grainy photo taken on March 18 released by the State Administration of Science Technology and Industry showed an object measuring 22.5 meters by 13 meters (74 by 43 feet) in the southern Indian Ocean. The location was given as just 120 kms distant from where March 16 satellite images — released by Australia on Thursday — had detected two pieces of possible wreckage in a remote, storm-swept stretch of ocean around 2,500 kms southwest of Perth. Meanwhile, Al-Arabiya released the last 54 minutes of cockpit communication aboard the missing Malaysian airline that has given more weight to the theory the plane was intentionally taken over, according to a transcript released by Britain's The Telegraph. While analysts say the transcript, translated from Mandarin, appears to be “perfectly routine,” there were two features that raised red flags. The conversation between the co-pilot, the control tower and other air traffic controllers shows that the flight's unexpected turn off course coincided with the handover of air traffic controllers in Kuala Lampur to those in Ho Chi Minh City. During this time, the flight would have been temporarily invisible to ground control, an ideal moment for the plane to veer off the intended flight path. “If I was going to steal the airplane, that would be the point I would do it,” Stephen Buzdygan, a former British Airways pilot who flew 777s, told The Telegraph. “There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers … It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground.” Another odd feature of the conversation was the messages from the cockpit at 1:07 a.m. which said the plane was flying at 35,000 feet. The message was odd not only because it was redundant — it had already been delivered six minutes earlier — but because it was sent at a crucial moment: the last time the plane's Acars signaling device sent its last message. It was disabled some time in the next 30 minutes, apparently on purpose. A separate transponder was disabled at 1:21 a.m. but investigators believe the Acars was shut down before co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's final farewell, “All right, good night,” at 1:19 a.m. In all other aspects, the correspondence between the 27-year-old fly enthusiast and the flight controllers, was routine. Although analysts noted his slightly casual approach in terms of his wording, nothing in his tone gave any indication he was about to fly off course. Despite this new twist, the search for the missing jet intensified. Six planes, including four Orion anti-submarine aircraft packed with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, scoured the area for a third straight day without success Saturday. The emergence of the new photo was announced in Kuala Lumpur by Malaysian Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, who was a handed a note during his daily press briefing on the international search for MH370 which vanished two weeks ago. Chinese, British and Australian naval ships are already steaming to the search area and the new image will provide welcome backing for the decision to deploy so many resources without confirmation that the objects are pieces of wreckage. In Perth, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss vowed there would be no let up in the search. “We intend to ... search until we are absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile and that day is not in sight,” Truss said. Malaysian investigators still believe it was “deliberately diverted” by someone on board. Three scenarios have gained particular traction: hijacking, pilot sabotage, and a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated the flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed. The search for MH370 has become one of the longest — and certainly largest — in modern aviation history. Expectations based on advances in technology, coupled with the modern era's relentless 24-hour media coverage, would seem to rule out public acceptance of the idea that the aircraft may never be found. — Al-Arabiya/Agencies
