SHAH ALAM, 10 Mar: Vietnamese searchers on ships worked throughout the night but could not find a rectangle object spotted Sunday afternoon that was thought to be one of the doors of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went missing more than two days ago.
Doan Huu Gia, the chief of Vietnam’s search and rescue coordination center, said Monday that six planes and seven ships from Vietnam were searching for the object but nothing had been found when this news was reported at 11am.
Previously, the Vietnamese search team reported the discovery of what they believed to be the door and the tail of the Boeing 777-200 owned by Malaysia Airlines (MAS) that went missing since Saturday morning.
The fragments were believed to be a composite inner door and a piece of the plane’s tail, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The objects were reportedly located about 50 miles south-southwest of Tho Chu island.
The Vietnamese government said it couldn’t land a seaplane near the objects to investigate them further because it was getting too dark.
In the meantime, on Monday morning, Australia sent the second RAAF aircraft from Darwin.
Australia sent the RAAF AP-3C Orion on Sunday night and the second aircraft took off from Darwin at 8.30am (AEDT) on Monday, according to the Australian Associated Press.
Air Marshal Mark Binskin said the maritime patrol and long-range surveillance aircraft were equipped with sensors and electro-optic detectors that were ideal for the operation.
There are 18 Australian crew on board each RAAF jet.
Siz Australians and two New Zealanders, one living in Perth, were on the MAS aircraft that went missing on the South China Sea early Saturday morning, an hour after the flight that should have taken six hours from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, took off.
