A month after MH370 disappeared, the search operation has been arduous, but Malaysia's determination remains undiminished, said Hishammuddin Hussein, the nation's acting transportation minister. The country is forming three committees to tackle the disappearance of the flight, he said. One will tend to the families of passengers aboard the missing flight. The second one will oversee the investigation team. The third committee will handle the deployment of assets.
[Previous story, 1 a.m.]
MH370: Scanners scour ocean depths for pings; no hard clues on flight simulator
Four weeks to the day since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, the trawling for clues goes on.
The search for physical evidence continues Saturday -- both on the surface of the southern Indian Ocean and deep below it.
The search for digital clues on the hard drives of a flight simulator in the home of one of the pilots turned up nothing conclusive. There was no "we got it" information, a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN late Friday.
There were some "curious" things, given the situation, the official said. The captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had programmed several alternate routes into the simulator, but it appeared he had done so to come up with safe plans of action in case of emergencies aboard the plane, the official said.
The searches appear to be what an experienced and professional pilot would do, the official said.
In the choppy waters of the Indian Ocean, the hunt is not letting up.
The British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield began scouring for the plane's pingers and possible wreckage about 6,500 feet to 13,000 feet deep on the ocean floor Friday.
The search was along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation.
Time is ticking fast to find the missing Boeing 777's locator pingers: If functioning as expected, their batteries will run out of juice in the next few days.
The Ocean Shield has high-tech gear borrowed from the United States. That includes a Bluefin-21, which can scour the ocean floor for wreckage, and a Towed Pinger Locator 25, with its underwater microphone to detect pings from the jet's voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).
"It is a very slow proceeding," U.S. Navy Capt. Mark M. Matthews said of the second tool, which is towed behind a vessel typically moving at 1 to 5 knots.
Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders, said: "If they do find it, I think it'll be remarkable."
Up to 10 military planes and three civilian aircraft -- in addition to 11 ships -- will be looking Saturday for any sign of Flight 370, according to the Australian government.
The search area will be just under 84,000 square miles (217,000 square kilometers), which is slightly less than the area searched Friday, and will focus some 1,050 miles northwest of Perth. This is about 50 miles further from the western Australian city than was the case a day earlier.
Is this the right spot? Will they find anything? So far, all efforts to locate signs of the airliner have proven unsuccessful. Still, those involved have vowed to keep trying.
"Really, the best we can do right now is put these assets in the best location -- the best guess we have -- and kind of let them go," U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks told CNN. "Until we get conclusive evidence of debris, it is just a guess."
'Long way to go'
Officials have repeatedly warned that the massive international search to find signs of the Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight may not conclude any time soon.
In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But it took them nearly two years to find the main pieces of wreckage, the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board.
With Flight 370, the search teams have even fewer clues.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that "we cannot be certain of ultimate success in the search" for the Malaysian aircraft. He described it as the most difficult search "in human history."
Authorities have yet to explain why the plane flew off course or where it ended up.
Investigations into the 227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any of them might have been behind the disappearance.
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