WATCH ABOVE: Called the most promising lead yet, searchers try to hone in on signals that are said to be consistent with a plane’s black box. Robin Stickley reports.
LATEST UPDATES:
- Malaysian official says he’s “cautiously hopeful” about positive developments in hunt for lost jet
- Australia’s PM says search for missing plane one of the most difficult in history
- On Saturday, electronic signals consistent with aircraft black box were detected by Chinese ship
- Families of missing still wait for news
- Tuesday marks one month since the plane went missing
TORONTO – U.S. Navy equipment has picked up signals consistent with the pings from aircraft black boxes, an Australian search official said on Monday, describing 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 coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean, warned however it may take days to confirm whether signals picked up by the Australian navy’s Ocean Shield are indeed from the flight recorders on Flight 370.
READ MORE: ‘Signal’ heard; unclear if related to missing jet
Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the US Navy, picked up two separate signals within a remote patch of the Indian Ocean far off the west Australian coast that search crews have been crisscrossing for weeks.
The first signal lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost.
The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again, this time recording two distinct “pinger returns” that lasted 13 minutes, Houston said.
READ MORE: 2 ships hunt for black boxes from missing plane
He said the position of the noise needs to be further refined before an underwater autonomous vehicle can be sent in to investigate.
If the Ocean Shield manages to pick up the signal again, the crew will launch a Bluefin-21 autonomous submarine that can dive to about 4,500 metres (14,800 feet), and scan for wreckage.
VIDEO GALLERY:
Given the fact that the sea floor in the area is approximately 4,500 metres, and even deeper in some spots, the sub will be operating to the limits of its capability, Houston said.
After a month-long hunt for answers filled with dead ends, Monday’s news brought fresh hope.
The two black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings, are the key to unravelling exactly what happened to Flight 370 and why.
READ MORE: Malaysian officials release cockpit transcript
But there is little time left to find the devices, which contain critical flight data and cockpit voice recordings that could help investigators unravel exactly what happened on board Flight 370.
The devices have beacons that emit “pings” so they can be more easily found, but the beacons’ batteries last only about a month.
Search for missing plane one of the most difficult in history: Australia’s PM
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 as “probably the most difficult search in human history” on Monday.
Abbott was addressing a business luncheon with Japanese business leaders in Tokyo.
Australia is coordinating the international search effort for the aircraft. Tuesday marks exactly one month since the plane disappeared.
Families of missing still wait for news
Almost a month since the mysterious disappearance of Flight MH370, 48-year-old school teacher Sarah Bajc continues to spend a lot of her time monitoring news updates about the missing airliner.
Bajc’s boyfriend Philip Wood—a 50-year old American executive—was among the 239 people aboard the missing aircraft. They had been together for more than two years.
READ MORE: Malaysia police say jet mystery may never be solved
With no debris of the plane being found after a month-long search, she is convinced now more than ever that the flight did not crash. But at this point, Bajc says she doesn’t know what to feel anymore.
The focus of the search has changed repeatedly since air traffic controllers lost contact with the jetliner between Malaysia and Vietnam. It began in the South China Sea, then shifted towards the Strait of Malacca to the West. The search eventually found its way to the southern Indian Ocean, based on extremely limited satellite data combined with radar data taken some five hours before the plane is believed to have gone down.
Paul Chin, a Chinese psychologist who has helped around 30 families, says most of the families are still in a state of denial, unable to come to terms with the reality of never seeing their loved ones come back.
For Bajc, her biggest concern is that the authorities continue to make every effort to find the aircraft.
“I think the scariest thing I can think of is that there is never closure,” she says. “If they just stay missing forever, that will be impossible to deal with.”
– with files from The Associated Press
Comments