Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) --
Authorities have spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that are possibly
related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
"New
and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean," Abbott said
in the the Australian House of Representatives in Canberra. "The
Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on
satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.
"Following
specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to
the search have been identified," he said. "I can inform the House
that a Royal Australian Air Force Orion has been diverted to attempt to locate
the objects."
Three
other planes will carry out a "more intensive follow-up search," he
said.
Australian
search teams have been at the forefront of the hunt for the missing plane in the
remote southern Indian Ocean.
The
announcement from Abbott raises hopes of finding parts of the plane after a
search that is now in its 13th day. Previous reports of debris found in the sea
have not turned out to be related
But those
reports came before the search area was massively expanded into two large arcs,
one that heads north into Asia, the other south into the Indian Ocean.
Other
pieces of information related to the investigation into the plane's
disappearance had emerged Wednesday.
Flight
simulator probed
Investigators
looking at the flight simulator taken from the home of Capt. Zaharie Ahmad
Shah, the pilot of the plane, have discovered that some data had been deleted
from it, Malaysia's acting transportation minister said.
What the
revelation means is unclear. It could be another dead end in an investigation
that has been full of them so far, or it could provide further evidence for the
theory that one or more of the flight crew may have been involved in the
plane's disappearance 12 days ago.
"It
may not tell us anything. It's a step in the process," one U.S. law
enforcement source told CNN. "It could be a very insignificant detail in
the process."
Investigators
have been looking into the background of all 239 passengers and crew members
aboard the plane that vanished in the early morning hours of March 8 while en
route from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China.
Particular
attention has focused on the pilot and first officer on Flight 370, but
authorities have yet to come up with any evidence explaining why either of them
would have taken the jetliner off course.
Acting
Transportation Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein didn't say what had been deleted,
but simulation programs can store data from previous sessions for later
playback. He also did not say who might have deleted the data.