Missing Malaysian plane: search cut short; new satellite spots objects

Planes have been flying out of Perth for a week, looking without any success for objects spotted in vague satellite images, including the French one.

Finding them would give physical confirmation that Flight 370, which was scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, crashed.

That would allow searchers to narrow the hunt for the wreckage of the Boeing 777 and its black boxes, which could solve the mystery of why the jet was so far off-course.

Malaysian officials said earlier this week that satellite data confirmed the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines ran a full-page condolence advertisement with a black background in a major newspaper.

“Our sincerest condolences go out to the loved ones of the 239 passengers, friends and colleagues. Words alone cannot express our enormous sorrow and pain,” read the advertisement in the New Straits Times.

The 122 objects captured by the French satellite ranged in size from 1 meter (3 feet) to 23 meters (75 feet) long, but the search for them and the objects from the Thai satellite will have to wait until the weather in the search area improves, echoing the frustration of earlier sweeps that failed to zero in on three objects spotted by satellites.

Experts cautioned that the area's frequent high seas and bad weather and its distance from land were complicating an already-trying search.