SYDNEY, Australia — An Australian search vessel has detected two more sets of signals that might originate from “black box” flight recorders from the Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for more than a month, an Australian official coordinating the search for the plane said on Wednesday.
The official, Angus Houston, said the new clues would help narrow the hunt for wreckage from the aircraft.
“What we’re picking up is a great lead,” Mr. Houston told a news conference in Perth. “I’m now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future.”
A locator towed by an Australian ship, the Ocean Shield, detected the two additional bursts of signals on Tuesday, after two were captured over the weekend, Mr. Houston said.
In recent days, pings were picked up by the Ocean Shield and the Chinese ship Haixun 01, which were searching the southern Indian Ocean northwest of Perth. Since those initial detections, the first announced by Chinese state news media on Saturday, no subsequent sounds had been picked up — until now.
“I can now tell you that Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and late last night Perth time,” said Mr. Houston, a retired chief marshal. The first detection on Tuesday lasted five minutes and 32 seconds, and the second lasted seven minutes.
“Ocean Shield has now detected four transmissions in the same broad area,” he said. “Yesterday’s signals will assist in better defining a reduced and much more manageable search area on the ocean floor.”
Analysis of the first two detections of signals from the Ocean Shield acquired over the weekend showed they were “consistent” with flight-record locator signals and were not from natural sources, Mr. Houston said.
“I believe we’re searching in the right area,” he said, “but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place.”
The batteries powering the locator signals on the missing aircraft expire after about 30 days, and Mr. Houston warned that the latest detections, if they came from the plane, were weakening, leaving little time.
There was still no sign of debris on the surface, Mr. Houston said. “The only thing we have got at the moment is the detection of the transmissions,” he said. “We have no idea at this stage what is under the water.”
He added that the underwater search would be difficult given the amount of silt on the seabed. “It makes a visual search under water very difficult.”
Commodore Peter Leavy of the Royal Australian Navy, who is helping to lead the search, said the silt on the seafloor was so thick that it might be muffling the signals from one or both black boxes.
On Tuesday, before the latest signals were detected, officials pledged to scour the ocean for the data recorders until they were certain that the pingers from the device were no longer working.
David Johnston, the Australian defense minister, described the challenging work ahead. “This is an herculean task,” he said. “It is over a very, very wide area. The water is extremely deep.”
The plane disappeared on March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard.
On Monday, Mr. Houston reported that the Ocean Shield, using a towed ping locator, had detected signals on two occasions, one lasting two hours and 20 minutes and the second lasting 13 minutes. The sounds were consistent with flight data and cockpit voice recorders and were described as the best lead that searchers had had as to where the plane might have disappeared. There has been no confirmation that the signals were from the jet, and no debris identified as being from Flight 370 has been collected from the sea.
Finding debris on the ocean surface, or detecting new acoustic transmissions, would allow searchers to significantly narrow the area on the ocean floor where wreckage might be found using a submersible vehicle.
“The better Ocean Shield can define the area, the easier it will be for the autonomous underwater vehicle to subsequently search for aircraft wreckage,” Mr. Houston said.
Earlier, Cmdr. William J. Marks, a spokesman for the United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said Australian and American crews were “working round the clock in a deliberate and methodical manner” to reacquire the signal, which would be emitted continuously if it came from a flight data recorder. He said that with a single pass, the signal could be located within a two-mile zone, but that with several passes, and a continuous signal, the beacon could be triangulated to within a couple of hundred yards.
The official, Angus Houston, said the new clues would help narrow the hunt for wreckage from the aircraft.
“What we’re picking up is a great lead,” Mr. Houston told a news conference in Perth. “I’m now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future.”
A locator towed by an Australian ship, the Ocean Shield, detected the two additional bursts of signals on Tuesday, after two were captured over the weekend, Mr. Houston said.
In recent days, pings were picked up by the Ocean Shield and the Chinese ship Haixun 01, which were searching the southern Indian Ocean northwest of Perth. Since those initial detections, the first announced by Chinese state news media on Saturday, no subsequent sounds had been picked up — until now.
“I can now tell you that Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and late last night Perth time,” said Mr. Houston, a retired chief marshal. The first detection on Tuesday lasted five minutes and 32 seconds, and the second lasted seven minutes.
“Ocean Shield has now detected four transmissions in the same broad area,” he said. “Yesterday’s signals will assist in better defining a reduced and much more manageable search area on the ocean floor.”
Analysis of the first two detections of signals from the Ocean Shield acquired over the weekend showed they were “consistent” with flight-record locator signals and were not from natural sources, Mr. Houston said.
“I believe we’re searching in the right area,” he said, “but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place.”
The batteries powering the locator signals on the missing aircraft expire after about 30 days, and Mr. Houston warned that the latest detections, if they came from the plane, were weakening, leaving little time.
There was still no sign of debris on the surface, Mr. Houston said. “The only thing we have got at the moment is the detection of the transmissions,” he said. “We have no idea at this stage what is under the water.”
He added that the underwater search would be difficult given the amount of silt on the seabed. “It makes a visual search under water very difficult.”
Commodore Peter Leavy of the Royal Australian Navy, who is helping to lead the search, said the silt on the seafloor was so thick that it might be muffling the signals from one or both black boxes.
On Tuesday, before the latest signals were detected, officials pledged to scour the ocean for the data recorders until they were certain that the pingers from the device were no longer working.
David Johnston, the Australian defense minister, described the challenging work ahead. “This is an herculean task,” he said. “It is over a very, very wide area. The water is extremely deep.”
The plane disappeared on March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard.
On Monday, Mr. Houston reported that the Ocean Shield, using a towed ping locator, had detected signals on two occasions, one lasting two hours and 20 minutes and the second lasting 13 minutes. The sounds were consistent with flight data and cockpit voice recorders and were described as the best lead that searchers had had as to where the plane might have disappeared. There has been no confirmation that the signals were from the jet, and no debris identified as being from Flight 370 has been collected from the sea.
Finding debris on the ocean surface, or detecting new acoustic transmissions, would allow searchers to significantly narrow the area on the ocean floor where wreckage might be found using a submersible vehicle.
“The better Ocean Shield can define the area, the easier it will be for the autonomous underwater vehicle to subsequently search for aircraft wreckage,” Mr. Houston said.
Earlier, Cmdr. William J. Marks, a spokesman for the United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said Australian and American crews were “working round the clock in a deliberate and methodical manner” to reacquire the signal, which would be emitted continuously if it came from a flight data recorder. He said that with a single pass, the signal could be located within a two-mile zone, but that with several passes, and a continuous signal, the beacon could be triangulated to within a couple of hundred yards.
