Norwegian Ship Reaches Location of Possible Malaysian Plane Debris

Norwegian car carrier Hoegh St. Petersburg has reached the area in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia where two floating objects, suspected to be debris from the missing Malaysian jetliner, were spotted, the ship’s owner said on Thursday.

The car carrier was on its way from Madagascar to Melbourne when it got a request from Australian authorities to assist in investigating the objects spotted by satellite four days ago in one of the remotest parts of the globe, around 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth.

“We’ve got a request from Australian authorities to search the area, and we will assist as long as needed,” said Kristian Olsen, a spokesman at Hoegh Autoliners.

The Norwegian shipping association told Reuters the ship was the first one to arrive in the area at 0800 GMT.

The larger of the objects measured up to 24 meters (79 feet) long and appeared to be floating on water several thousand meters deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about 5 meters (16 feet) long.

No confirmed wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been found since it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia’s east coast early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

(Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord and Camilla Knudsen; Writing by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)