CANBERRA, March 26 — The hunt for Flight 370 resumed after a day’s pause, with ships and aircraft from six nations scouring the Indian Ocean amid a forecast for rain and thunderstorms tomorrow.

The US, China, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea are among nations helping the Australia-led effort to find debris. The search was halted yesterday as gale-force winds hit the area about 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth. Malaysian Airline System Bhd. has said there’s no hope of survivors on the Boeing Co 777-200ER plane that disappeared from radar on March 8.

A cumulative 80,000 square kilometres is set to be combed, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in an e-mailed statement today. Australia’s HMAS Success will sweep a zone where an Australian P3 Orion saw objects on March 24. China’s polar supply ship Xue Long is due to arrive in the area later.

“A considerable amount” of objects have been spotted, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said today in parliament, which was attended by family members of the six Australians on the plane that was carrying 239 people to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. “Bad weather and inaccessibility have so far prevented any of it being recovered, but we are confident some will be.”

Clouds, winds

Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for the part of the Indian Ocean where the search is taking place, Neil Bennett, Bureau of Meteorology media manager for Western Australia, said by phone. Visibility will probably be reduced by low clouds and strong winds and conditions will “markedly worse” than today, Bennett said.

Investigators have used satellite data from Inmarsat Plc to try and find a location of the aircraft. With the plane’s communications systems having been shut off and no wreckage found, the engineers’ conclusions have been the closest thing to a resolution of the longest disappearance in modern airline history.

“We owe it to the families, we owe it to an anxious world to do everything we can to finally locate some wreckage and to do whatever we can to solve the riddle of this extraordinarily ill-fated flight,” Abbott said in an interview with the Seven Network today. “We keep searching until there is absolutely no hope of finding anything.”

Last position

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said March 24 the jet’s last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean off Australia’s west coast and the flight ended there, based on satellite data from Inmarsat. While satellites have spotted some objects in the Indian Ocean, no debris has been recovered.

Malaysian Air and Boeing records on Flight 370’s maintenance and crew are being sought by a law firm representing the father of one of the flight’s missing passengers, the opening salvo in what may end up being a barrage of litigation over the plane’s disappearance.

The request for information by Chicago-based Ribbeck Law Chartered on behalf of Januari Siregar is a potential prelude to the filing of a lawsuit. Siregar’s son, Firman Chandra Siregar, was a passenger on Flight 370, according to the firm.

The US is sending equipment that can be towed behind a ship to help locate the aircraft’s black box, which can emit pings for 30 days after becoming immersed in water. Recovery of the data and cockpit-voice recorders from the 777 would help investigators narrow in on the plane’s movements and pilots’ actions in its final hours in the air after contact was lost.

Beijing protest

“We must accept the painful reality that the aircraft is now lost and that none of the passengers or crew on board survived,” Malaysian Air Chairman Md Nor Yusof said in a statement yesterday. “This news is clearly devastating for the families of those on board.”

Malaysia’s conclusion sparked a street protest by passengers’ families in Beijing yesterday. China demanded Malaysia provide information related to the analysis of the satellite data and “make clear the specific basis” for the conclusion, state-run Xinhua News Agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng as saying.

Malaysia, which had earlier drawn up two corridors to conduct the search for the aircraft, said it called off operations in the northern zone. Scouring the region close to Indonesia has also stopped, Malaysia’s Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Pinger locator

All efforts are now focused in the southern part of the southern corridor, covering about 469,407 square nautical miles, narrowing down from a total possible search area of 2.24 million square nautical miles announced a week ago.

“The crash zone is about as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be but it’s closer to Australia than to anywhere else,” Abbott said before parliament today.

Two South Korean aircraft left for western Australian city of Perth to help with the search. Six Chinese ships are in the area and are expected to arrive within the vicinity of MH370’s last known position today, Hishammuddin said yesterday.

The American towed pinger locater, which can help find the black box, is en route to Perth and will arrive today. The Ocean Shield, which will be fitted with the device, is due to arrive in the search area on April 5.

Malaysia said yesterday it needed time to analyse communications between the plane and the satellite. Based on aircraft speed, it was then possible to estimate positions when the last “complete handshake,” or communication, took place. There is evidence of a partial handshake between the aircraft and the ground station eight minutes after the complete communication, Hishammuddin said yesterday.

The partial ping may help narrow the potential location of the plane, said Chris de Lavigne, an aviation and defence analyst at Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.

“This area is very difficult to search,” he said.— Bloomberg