High winds and icy weather halted the air search on Thursday for a Malaysia Airlines  passenger jet presumed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, just as new satellite images emerged showing what could be a large debris field from the plane.

The latest possible sightings of wreckage from Flight MH370, which went missing 19 days ago, were captured by Thai and Japanese satellites in roughly the same remote expanse of sea as earlier images reported by France, Australia and China.

"We detected floating objects, perhaps more than 300," Anond Snidvongs, the head of Thailand's space technology development agency, told Reuters. "We have never said that the pieces are part of MH370 but have so far identified them only as floating objects."

A Japanese satellite also captured images of 10 objects which could be part of the plane, Kyodo news agency quoted the government as saying on Thursday.

An international search team of 11 military and civilian aircraft and five ships had been heading for an area where more than 100 objects that could be from the Boeing 777 had been identified by French satellite pictures earlier this week, but severe weather forced the planes to turn back.

"The forecast in the area was calling for severe icing, severe turbulence and near-zero visibility," said Lieutenant Commander Adam Schantz, the officer in charge of the U.S. Navy Poseidon P8 maritime surveillance aircraft detachment.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the effort, confirmed flights had been called off but said ships continued to search despite battering waves.

"It's the nature of search and rescue. It's a fickle beast," Flying Officer Peter Moore, the captain of an Australian AP-3C Orion, told Reuters aboard the plane after it turned around 600 miles from the search zone.

"This is incredibly important to us. The reality is we have 239 people whose families want some information and closure."

NEW IMAGES

The Malaysian airliner, on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, is thought to have crashed with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.

The objects spotted by the Thai satellite were between 2 metres (6.5 ft) and 16 metres (52 ft) in size and were in an area around 2,700 km (1,680 miles) southwest of Perth, Snidvongs said.

The pictures were taken on Monday, a day after a satellite operated by France-based Airbus Defence & Space spotted 122 potential objects in a 400 sq km (155 sq mile) area of ocean around 2,500 km southwest of the Western Australian city.

The pictures by the Japanese satellite were taken on Wednesday of debris about 2,500 km (1,553 miles) southwest of Perth, the biggest measuring 4 by 8 metres, a government official said.

MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after take-off and investigators believe someone on board may have shut off the plane's communications systems. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.

Partial military radar tracking showed the plane turning west off its scheduled course over the South China Sea and then recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

The logistical difficulties of the search have been highlighted by the failure so far to get a lock on possible debris, despite the now numerous satellite images and direct visual sightings from aircraft and ships.

The area being searched by crews from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea has some of the deepest and roughest waters in the world.

One day had already been lost earlier this week because weather conditions were too dangerous, but Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said the forecast for Friday was better.

RELATIVES DISTRAUGHT

Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries.

The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian ship due in Perth in the coming days.

The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up their locator beacons, which stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.

The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of 150 Chinese passengers clashing with police and accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception".

China has repeatedly voiced its frustration with the efforts of Malaysia to find the plane. China's special envoy to Malaysia said on Thursday that Beijing was doing its best to push the Southeast Asian nation to coordinate the international search effort, state news agency Xinhua said.

Chinese insurance companies have started paying compensation to the families of passengers, Xinhua reported separately.

The family of Paul Weeks, a New Zealander on board the Malaysia Airlines flight, said they had been angered by the way the airline has dealt with the families of passengers.

"The whole situation has been handled appallingly, incredible insensitivity, lack of information," Weeks's sister, Sara Weeks, told Radio Live in New Zealand.

She said her brother's wife had only received a text message to say that her husband was presumed dead.

EARLIER REPORT

Satellite spots 300 'objects'

Thai satellite images have shown 300 floating objects in the southern Indian Ocean during a search for the missing Malaysian airliner, an official said Thursday.

The objects, ranging from two to 15 metres (6.5 to 50 feet) in size, were scattered over an area about 2,700 kilometres (1,680 miles) southwest of Perth, according to the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency.

"But we cannot -- dare not -- confirm they are debris from the plane," the agency's executive director, Anond Snidvongs, told AFP.

He said the information had been given to Malaysia.

The pictures were taken by Thailand's only earth observation satellite on Monday but needed several days to process, Anond added.

He said the objects were spotted about 200 kilometres away from an area where French satellite images earlier showed potential objects in the search for the Boeing 777 which vanished on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

Thailand faced criticism after announcing more than a week after the jet's disappearance that its radar had picked up an "unknown aircraft" minutes after flight MH370 last transmitted its location.

The Thai air force said it did not report the findings earlier as the plane was not considered a threat.

The Malaysia Airlines plane is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean after mysteriously diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing path and apparently flying for hours in the opposite direction.

Storms ground search

Thunderstorms and gale-force winds grounded the international search for wreckage from Flight MH370 on Thursday, frustrating the luckless effort yet again just as new satellite images of floating objects sparked hopes of a breakthrough.

It marked the second suspension within three days for the planes and vessels from several nations that have fought a losing battle against fierce winds and mountainous seas in the remote southern Indian Ocean as they hunt for hard evidence that the plane crashed.

"Today's search operations have been suspended due to bad weather," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the search, said on its Twitter account.

"All planes are returning to Perth & ships are leaving search area."

Malaysia had said late Wednesday that images taken in recent days by a French satellite showed "122 potential objects" adrift in the vast area, but nothing has been recovered yet that would confirm the plane's fate.

122 more floating objects sighted amid gale threat

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 is presumed to have crashed on March 8 in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard after mysteriously diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing path and apparently flying for hours in the opposite direction.

Malaysia believes the plane was deliberately re-directed by someone on board, but nothing else is known.

AMSA had said earlier the new images were in an area authorities have pinpointed as a potential crash zone some 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.

Six military planes from Australia, China, Japan and the United States had been set to fly sorties throughout Thursday, along with five civil aircraft, scouring two areas covering a cumulative 78,000 square kilometres.

Five ships from Australia and China also had been set to resume searching the zone.

Clock ticks on black box

The search was also suspended Tuesday due to bad weather, causing mounting concern as the clock ticks on the signal emitted by the plane's "black box" of flight data.

The data is considered vital to unravelling the flight's mystery but the signal, aimed at guiding searchers to the device on the seabed where it hopefully can be recovered, will expire in under two weeks.

The drama is playing out in a wild expanse of ocean described by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as "about as close to nowhere as it's possible to be", and known for gale-force winds and towering waves.

Chirps that locate 'black box' to fade by mid-April

The new satellite images provided by European aerospace giant Airbus depicted some objects as long as 23 metres (75 feet), Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

Seeking closure, anguished families of those aboard are desperately awaiting hard evidence, which the aviation industry hopes can also provide clues to what caused one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

US law firm Ribbeck Law Chartered International fired the first salvo Wednesday in an expected barrage of lawsuits on behalf of grieving families. The firm is targeting Malaysia Airlines and Boeing.

"We are going to be filing the lawsuits for millions of dollars per each passenger based on prior cases that we have done involving crashes like this one," the firm's head of aviation litigation, Monica Kelly, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

A separate statement by the firm, which filed an initial court petition in the US state of Illinois on Tuesday, said the two companies "are responsible for the disaster of Flight MH370".

Malaysia Airlines has declined detailed comment.

Malaysia's government said this week that satellite data indicated the plane plunged into the sea, possibly after running out of fuel.

'Appalling' handling

MH370 relatives have endured more than a fortnight of agonising uncertainty.

Two-thirds of the passengers were from China, and relatives there have criticised Malaysia in acid terms, accusing the government and airline of a cover-up and botching the response.

Missing Malaysian plane: 7 pings and satellite 'handshake'… Final proof MH370 crashed in sea?

The sister of New Zealand victim Paul Weeks lashed out Thursday.

"The whole situation has been handled appallingly, incredibly insensitively," Sara Weeks told Radio Live in New Zealand.

"The Malaysian government, the airline, it's just all been incredibly poor."

Scores of Chinese relatives protested outside Malaysia's embassy in Beijing on Tuesday, and a day later Premier Li Keqiang urged Malaysia to involve "more Chinese experts" in the investigation.

While Malaysia believes the plane was deliberately diverted, other scenarios include a hijacking, pilot sabotage or a crisis that incapacitated the crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot until it ran out of fuel.

Focus has also been on the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, with the FBI Wednesday saying it was close to completing an analysis of data from a flight simulator taken from his home.

Malaysian authorities had sought FBI help to recover files deleted from the hard drive.

So far, no information implicating the captain or anyone else has emerged.

Battery to die soon

The batteries powering the locator signal of the black boxes of the missing passenger jet will run out soon, and just two days before the American locator actually reaches the search site.

According to Malaysia Airlines, the American Towed Pinger Locater – an instrument that can help find a black box – is currently en route to Perth and will arrive today [March 27]. The system will be fitted onto the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which is due to dock in Perth tomorrow, on March 28.

The Ocean Shield, fitted with the Towed Pinger Locater, is due to arrive in the search area on April 5, a full 28 days after crash and just a couple of days before the batteries powering the locate-me signal die down. The batteries remaion active for about a month before running out. 

In addition, even if searchers are able to miraculously pluck Malaysia Airlines flight 370's "black box" from the depths of the vast Indian Ocean, experts say it may not solve one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

FBI says review of jet computer files almost done

US FBI Director James Comey told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Wednesday  he expects his agency to finish an investigation of computer files related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in the next one or two days.

Comey, who was testifying before an appropriations subcommittee on the FBI's 2015 budget request, said Malaysian authorities gave the FBI forensic computer materials and that the agency's review of those materials is nearly complete.

"I have teams working really around the clock to exploit that," Comey said. "I don't want to say more about that in an open setting, but I expect it to be done fairly shortly. Within a day or two we will finish that work."

Comey did not say what results he expected from the FBI's analysis. He also denied allegations that Malaysian authorities had not been open to assistance offered by the FBI in the investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which has been missing for over two weeks.

US law firm launches legal action

A US law firm said on Wednesday it has initiated what it called the first civil legal proceedings over the crash of flight MH370 and said it planned to pursue lawsuits seeking "millions of dollars" for aggrieved families.

Chicago-based Ribbeck Law Chartered said it filed a court petition in the US state of Illinois targeting Malaysia Airlines and Boeing, blaming the two companies for the disaster.

"We are going to be filing the lawsuits for millions of dollars per each passenger based on prior cases that we have done involving crashes like this one," its head of aviation litigation, Monica Kelly, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

The development appeared to mark the start of what legal experts have warned could be a cascade of lawsuits by passengers' relatives livid over the unexplained disappearance of their loved ones. 

The plane carried 239 passengers and crew.

Kelly said her firm was also talking to several other relatives in China and Malaysia about taking similar action.

Ribbeck in a statement said it had filed a "petition of discovery" in Illinois requesting a court to order defendants to provide potential evidence and other information.

Malaysia Airlines, Boeing blamed

In particular, the documents being sought pertain to possible design or mechanical defects or conduct by the airline that may have led to the disaster, it said.

"We believe that both defendants named are responsible for the disaster of Flight MH370," the statement said.

The legal action was filed on behalf of Januari Siregar, an Indonesian lawyer and father of Firman Chandra Siregar, 25, who was on the flight.

"I seek justice for my son and all of the people who lost their lives in the crash," Januari Siregar was quoted in the statement as saying.

"All of the families of the victims want to know the truth and causes of this tragedy, same mistakes must be avoided in the future and those responsible must be brought to court."

Boeing and Malaysia Airlines have 30 days to reply, Kelly told reporters, adding that a lawsuit could take years to settle.

Kelly said Malaysia Airlines' policy with German insurer Allianz was worth more than $1.5 billion.

Ground contact with the Beijing-bound flight was lost somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand, shortly after it took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

Malaysia believes it was deliberately diverted. It said Monday that satellite data indicates the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from its original path.

But no wreckage has been found there despite several days of searching by a fleet of ships and planes, and no other evidence has publicly emerged to indicate what caused the plane to divert.

Airline's liability 'almost certain'

Floyd Wisner, another US-based aviation crash attorney, said Malaysia Airlines' liability was "almost certain, no matter what the cause of the crash ultimately is determined to be".

"The fact that the wreckage has not yet been found does not have any real legal impact upon the families' claims against Malaysia Airlines," he told AFP.

However, other lawyers said lawsuits could be bogged down by the lack of evidence.

Many of the next-of-kin of MH370 passengers, particularly Chinese relatives, have been frustrated with the lack of information and angrily accuse the flag carrier and the Malaysian government of incompetence and withholding evidence.

Two-thirds of the 227 passengers were Chinese.

Kelly said her firm believed equipment failure caused a fire or sudden loss of pressure that rendered the pilots unconscious and "a ghost plane" flew for several hours until it ran out of fuel.

Malaysia Airlines said in a statement its lawyers had been advised of the court action, but declined further comment.

Boeing did not immediately return a request for comment.

The national flag carrier has already paid $5,000 to next-of-kin, but they are entitled to up to about $176,000 under an international convention.

Satellite images show 122 potential objects

Fresh satellite images taken during the search for a missing passenger jet show 122 "potential objects" in one area of the Indian Ocean, Malaysia said Wednesday.

The images from Airbus Defence and Space in France show the objects in a 400 sq km area of the ocean, said Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

Hishammuddin told a daily press conference it was not possible to say whether the objects came from the Boeing 777 which crashed on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

"Nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation," he said.

Earlier satellite data from Australia, China and France had also shown floating objects possibly related to MH370, but nothing has so far been retrieved despite a huge multinational search.

Hishammuddin said the Airbus images were taken on Sunday, received Tuesday, and immediately forwarded to the Australian agency coordinating the search.

He said the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency had identified the 122 "potential objects" after analysing the satellite images.

Some were a metre in length while others were as long as 23 metres.

"Some of the objects appeared to be bright, possibly indicating solid materials," the minister said.

They were located about 2,557 km  from Perth. The search effort has focused on waters far to the southwest of Australia.

Australia says three more objects seen

Australian authorities said on Wednesday that three more objects had been spotted by aircraft searching for a Malaysian jet missing in the southern Indian Ocean.

A civilian aircraft, one of 12 scouring the region some 2,500km southwest of Perth, had seen two objects thought to be rope, while a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion spotted a blue object, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on its Twitter feed.

None was seen again on subsequent passes and none was distinctive of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, ASMA added.

Theories continue to abound - some plausible, some crazy... but all without hope

Satellite data that confirmed a Malaysian jetliner missing for more than two weeks crashed in the Indian Ocean included a final electronic signal that is still being investigated, Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Tuesday.

"There is evidence of a partial handshake between the aircraft and ground station at 0019 UTC (GMT)," Hishammuddin told a news conference.

"At this time, this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work."

Preliminary analysis of the satellite "pings" had only been able to place the plane's final position in one of two vast arcs stretching from the Caspian Sea to the southern Indian Ocean.

Aviation's greatest mystery

Even if searchers are able to miraculously pluck Malaysia Airlines flight 370's "black box" from the depths of the vast Indian Ocean, experts say it may not solve one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

Planes, ships and state-of-the-art tracking equipment are hunting for any trace of the passenger jet, which Malaysia said crashed in the forbidding waters after veering far from its intended course.

They face a huge challenge locating the Boeing 777's "black box", which holds vital clues to determining what caused the plane to vanish after it took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8.

But experts believe the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder may not yield answers on the riddle of how and why the plane diverted an hour into the flight, and embarked on a baffling journey to the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.

The data recorder details the aircraft's path and other mechanical information for the flight's duration, and "should provide a wealth of information", US-based aviation consultancy firm Leeham Co said in a commentary.

But the cockpit voice recorder - which could reveal what decisions were made by those at the helm and why - retains only the last two hours of conversations before the plane's demise.

That means potentially crucial exchanges surrounding the initial diversion, which took place halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam, will be lost.

"Clearly, it won't reveal anything that happened over the Gulf of Thailand - this will have been overwritten by the end of MH370," it said.

Leeham added that it also remains to be seen whether the cockpit recorder will contain anything pertinent about the plane's final two hours, when it is believed to have either ditched or run out of fuel.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that Flight MH370 had gone down in the Indian Ocean with its 239 passengers and crew, citing new satellite data analysis.

But its exact location and the circumstances of its diversion remain a mystery. No distress signal was ever received.

The possible theories

Three scenarios have gained particular traction: hijacking, pilot sabotage, or a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel.

Malaysia has said it believes the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on board.

But with the travelling public and aviation industry hanging on every twist in the drama, no firm evidence has emerged from a Malaysian investigation to support any of the theories circulating.

British aviation expert Chris Yates said that even if the black boxes are found, "it seems unlikely that we will get that answer" of why the plane ended up thousands of kilometres off course.

"We still have no idea as to the mental state of the pilot and co-pilot, we have no idea if somebody managed to get into the cockpit to seize the aircraft, and we've certainly had no admissions of responsibility since this whole episode started," he told BBC television.

"It is a mystery like no other."

Debris has been sighted far off Australia's west coast but an international search effort has been unable to retrieve any for confirmation, and wreckage could have drifted hundreds of kilometres from where the plane crashed.

"As investigators, we deal with physical evidence and right now we don't have any physical evidence to work with," Anthony  Brickhouse, a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators, told AFP.

The batteries powering the locator signal of the black boxes will run out in less than two weeks.

A US device capable of detecting that signal even on the ocean floor was being sent to the scene, but weather and treacherous sea conditions have hampered the effort to pinpoint the black box location.

Paul Yap, an aviation lecturer at Singapore's Temasek Polytechnic, said that if the black box is not found, "chances are we are never going to find out what really happened".

"With the new satellite data, I think we can say it is a chessboard," he said of the wide search area.

"The question now is to find which grid on that chessboard to focus on, where the black boxes are."

And now for some of the truly outlandish theories floating about....

Pitbull-Shakira

A 2012 Pitbull-Shakira song, Get It Started has been thrown into the mix.

The lyrics No Ali/No freezer/But for now, off to Malaysia were perceived to have been prophetic, seeing as ‘Mr Ali’ was the nickname given by the British media to one of the Iranian passengers with a fake passport.

Cloaking device

There were 20 employees of Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor on board and It seemed that there was a cloaking device involved, one created by the company and coveted by China.

Star Wars weapon

As per Natural News:."The frightening part about all this is not that we will find the debris of Flight 370; but rather that we won't."

"If we never find the debris, it means some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence. If there does exist a weapon with such capabilities, whoever controls it already has the ability to dominate all of Earth's nations with a fearsome military weapon of unimaginable power."

For complete Malaysia Airlines MH370 coverage click below

Search is on: Undersea drone joins hunt for missing Malaysian Airlines jet

Malaysia Airlines lost with no survivors: Where is the proof?

Revealed: 7 pings and satellite 'handhake'… Final proof MH370 crashed in sea?