Bad Weather Suspends Search For MH370 In Indian Ocean

By Scott Neuman / NPR

Published March 25, 2014 at 12:54 AM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

Family members of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 cry as they shout slogans during a protest in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing.

Angry relatives of passengers aboard the ill-fated Flight 370 vented their anger at Malaysian officials as rough weather in the southern Indian Ocean temporarily halted the search for wreckage from the airliner.

The BBC reports:

"In Beijing, relatives of passengers on board the plane released a statement accusing the Malaysian government of trying to 'delay, distort and hide the truth.'

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"Dozens of them then left their Beijing hotel on a protest bound for the Malaysian embassy, carrying banners asking Kuala Lumpur to be truthful with the relatives."

In a news conference on Tuesday, Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the last signal from the aircraft was a "partial handshake" from a satellite link between the aircraft and ground station at 0019 GMT on March 8.

Initially, the satellite "pings" had only given searchers a rough arc north or south of the Boeing 777's final reported position. But on Monday, Malaysia's prime minister said a new type of analysis performed by the satellite company Inmarsat determined that the plane followed the southern leg and that its last signal came from a position somewhere off Australia's western coast. That announcement, which concluded there must be no survivors, came as satellites and aircraft spotted debris in the same general area.

But gale-force winds and heavy rain in the southern Indian Ocean have temporarily halted the search for possible wreckage. Officials hope that finding pieces of the airplane, including the flight data recorder, will provide definitive answers as to what happened to MH370 that was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went wildly off course.

The weather was expected to improve by Wednesday, allowing planes to resume their search of an area about 1,550 miles southwest of Perth, but the delay could cause debris that was spotted earlier to drift from the immediate search area.

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Beijing, meanwhile, is demanding that Malaysia turn over the satellite data used to conclude that the jetliner took a southern route and crash-landed in one of the remotest stretches of ocean in the world.