An Australian military vessel has detected signals consistent with those emitted by an aircraft black box in what is the most promising lead yet in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston told reporters in Perth today that, “the pinger locator has detected signals consistent with those emitted by aircraft black boxes.”
Two separate signals have been detected by Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield — the first was held for about two hours and twenty minutes before contact was lost, and the second for about thirteen minutes where two distinct pinger returns were heard. Houston explained, “Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.”
He continued, “Clearly this is a most promising lead and probably in the search so far it’s the best information we’ve had. Again, I would ask you to treat this information cautiously until we can provide an unequivocal determination. We haven’t found the aircraft yet, we need further confirmation.”
Timing is absolutely critical in this discovery; the black box has a battery life of thirty days and today is day thirty of the search.
These local developments have come shortly after Chinese patrol vessel Haixun One Zero reported detecting two pulse signals over the weekend. Both HMS Echo and RAAF aircraft were diverted to the Haixun’s location on Sunday in hopes of verifying whether the signals could be linked to the plane’s black box.
Flight MH370 has now been missing for nearly a month, having disappeared during a flight from Kuala Lumpar to Beijing on March 8th with 293 people on board.
