12Days After: TWO POTENTIAL BITS OF MISSING FLIGHT MH370 WRECKAGE FOUND

Two objects that may be wreckage from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been spotted floating in the southern Indian Ocean.

The Australian government released pictures taken by satellite on March 16 of possible plane debris seen around 2,500km (1,500miles) southwest of Perth - one of the most remote areas of the planet that's a four-hour flight from the Australian coast.

One of the objects is estimated to be 78ft (24m) in size, the other 15ft (five metres), and the sighting of the objects was said by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to be 'credible and potentially important'.

The possibility that the objects could be from MH370 increased when a crew member on board a U.S Navy P-8 Poseidon search plane declared 'there is something down there'.

The crew were on one of several aircraft dispatched to look for the debris.

The US TV company, ABC News, which has a representative on board the aircraft, said the crew had told him about the radar indication.

But ABC said it was still too early to tell if the radar hits were related to the missing plane.

Earlier a Royal Australian Air Force surveillance plane completed a sweep of the search area and failed to find the objects. It was reportedly hampered by poor visibility.

Andrew Nelson, a reporter for A Current Affair on Nine Network Australia, who travelled on board, said: 'From what we saw at the time there was no debris visible to us in that area.'

The RAAF crew today was 'very confident they will get a result' despite today's 'very treacherous conditions', Nine reported.

The flight disappeared on March 8 on a night journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. 

It is now 13 days after it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast at 1:21am local time.

Officials say that it had enough fuel to travel around 2,500 miles since it disappeared.

The plane was last seen on military radar at 02.14am heading west over the Strait of Malacca.

Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board, and have asked for background checks from abroad on all foreign passengers. 

The plane's transponder - which sends out an identifying signal - was switched off at 1.21am, along with the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS.

This is a message sent every 30 minutes to maintenance crews that indicates the plane's speed, altitude, position and fuel levels.

Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off these systems before diverting it thousands of miles.

Officials haven't ruled out, however, that a catastrophic accident incapacitated the crew.

Speaking about the latest developments, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said 'we have a new and credible lead' that 'gives us hope'.

The credibility of the sighting is based partly on the fact that an ephemeral satellite signal suggested the plane was somewhere in two broad arcs - either to the northwest towards Kazakhstan or to the southwest in the Indian Ocean.

The two objects are at the far end of the southerly corridor.