Search official: Most promising lead in plane search

US Navy equipment has picked up signals consistent with the pings from aircraft black boxes, an Australian search official said today.

Search official: Most promising lead in plane search

US Navy equipment has picked up signals consistent with the pings from aircraft black boxes, an Australian search official said today.

He described the discovery as “a most promising lead” in the nearly month-long hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency co-ordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean, called it “very encouraging”.

But he said it may take days to confirm whether signals picked up by the ship Ocean Shield are indeed from the flight recorders on Flight 370.

The Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, using a US Navy towed pinger locator, detected the sounds on two occasions over a period totalling more than two-and-a-half hours.

“Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it’s the probably the best information that we have had,” Mr Houston said at a news conference.

“This would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.”

He said the position of the noise needs to be further refined, and then an underwater autonomous vehicle can be sent in to investigate.

“It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370. In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.”

The plane vanished on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board, setting off an international search that started off Vietnam and then shifted to the southern Indian Ocean as information from radar and satellite data was refined.

The length of the search and lack of any information on the cause of the plane to go so far off course has transfixed the world, and made finding the black boxes important to finding a possible cause.

Mr Houston said the Ocean Shield detected two separate signal detections in the northern part of the defined search area, with the first detected for approximately two hours and 20 minutes, and the second for 13 minutes on the ship’s return trip over the same area.

He said the depth in the area is approximately 14,800 feet, and he warned that it was too early to say the transmissions were coming from the black boxes on the missing passenger jet.

“I would want more confirmation before we say this is it,” he said.

“Without wreckage, we can’t say it’s definitely here. We’ve got to go down and have a look and hopefully we’ll find it somewhere in the area that we narrowed to.”

more courts articles

Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother Man (25) in court charged with murdering his father and attempted murder of mother
Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van Man appears in court charged with false imprisonment of woman in van
Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman Man in court over alleged false imprisonment of woman

More in this section

Greece’s government survives no-confidence motion called over rail disaster Greece’s government survives no-confidence motion called over rail disaster
Child, 8, the only survivor as 45 killed in South Africa bus crash Child, 8, the only survivor as 45 killed in South Africa bus crash
Russia ‘abolishes’ monitoring of sanctions on North Korea with UN veto Russia ‘abolishes’ monitoring of sanctions on North Korea with UN veto
Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Brand Safety FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Examiner Echo Group Limited