No debris spotted in an area off the west coast of Australia has been recovered, Malayia's defence minister said on Saturday, adding that he hoped for some news soon.
Hishammuddin Hussein made the comment as China's state news agency reported that a Chinese aircraft had spotted three suspicious objects floating in a search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
Xinhua News Agency said the Ccrew of the Ilyushin IL-76 had sighted the three floating objects of white, red and orange colours from an altitude of 300 metres.
Flight 370 disappeared on March 8 while bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Investigators believed it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, where planes and ships have been looking to recover any debris.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defence minister and acting transport minister, hugs a relative of a Flight MH370 passenger during his visit to a hotel in Putrajaya on Saturday. (AFP Photo)
Mr Hishammuddin, who is also Malaysia's acting transport minister, said he had no new information on the objects spotted so far, which could be other debris floating in the ocean, or could be from the missing plane.
"I've got to wait to get the reports on whether they have retrieved those objects. ... Those will give us some indication."
Mr Hishammuddin, accompanied by his wife and children, paid an emotional visit to relatives of MH370 passengers gathered at a hotel in Putrajaya, where he also offered a spirited defence of his government's handling of the MH370 affair.
He said that even though he and others were "hoping against hope" that there could be survivors, his government would not rest until the families of the passengers received closure.
Several planes and ships combed the newly targeted area for objects that were first spotted on Friday, including two rectangular items that were blue and gray, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
"The objects cannot be verified or discounted as being from MH370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships," the authority said in a statement.
"It is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is ordinarily there. At least one distinctive fishing object has been identified."
Investigators have been puzzling over what might have happened aboard the plane, with speculation ranging from equipment failure and a botched hijacking to terrorism or an act by one of the pilots.
The latter was fuelled by reports the pilot's home flight simulator had files deleted from it. But Mr Hishimmuddin said checks, including ones by the FBI, turned up no new information.
Australian crew members on the HMAS Success look for debris in the southern Indian Ocean during the search for Flight MH370. (AFP Photo)
"What I know is that there is nothing sinister from the simulators but of course that will have to be confirmed by the chief of police," he said.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said a cold front would bring rain, low clouds and reduced visibility over the southern part of the search area, with moderate winds and swells of up to two metres. Conditions were forecast to improve on Sunday, although rain, drizzle and low clouds are still likely.
Newly analysed satellite data shifted the search zone on Friday, raising hopes searchers may be closer to getting physical evidence that that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.
That would also help narrow the hunt for the wreckage and the plane's black boxes, which could contain clues to what caused the plane to be so far off-course.
The US Navy has already sent equipment that can detect pings from the back boxes, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the equipment would be put on an Australian naval ship soon.
"It will be taken to the most prospective search area and if there is good reason to deploy it, it will be deployed," he said, without giving a timeframe.
Other officials have said it could take days for the ship, the Ocean Shield, to reach the search area.
The newly targeted zone is nearly 1,130 kilometres northeast of sites the searchers have crisscrossed for the past week. The redeployment came after analysts determined that the Boeing 777 may have been travelling faster than earlier estimates and would therefore have run out of fuel sooner, officials said.
Search planes were sent out on Saturday from Perth in a staggered manner, so at least one plane would be over the area for most of the daylight hours.
Five P-3 Orions -- three from Australia and one each from Japan and New Zealand -- plus a Japanese coast guard jet, a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76, and one civilian jet acting as a communications relay, took part Saturday.
Mr Abbott said the job of locating the debris was still difficult. "We should not underestimate the difficulty of this work. It is an extraordinarily remote location."
The area spans about 319,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of Poland. In most places, depths range from about 2,000 to 4,000 metres, although the much deeper Diamantina trench edges the search area.
"There are a number of ridges, escarpments and fracture zones that run through this area, so it's a fairly complex area," said Rochelle Wigley, director of the Indian Ocean Mapping Project at the University of New Hampshire.
She said determining the ocean floor topography within the search zone depended on its exact coordinates. While investigators appear to be focusing on an area where much of the sea floor is about 2,000 metres below the surface, depths may reach a maximum of about 6,000 metres at its easternmost edge, she said.