KUALA LUMPUR, April 7—The towed pinger locator deployed to find the black boxes from flight MH370 locked on to two separate signals believed to be from the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, Australian authorities revealed today.
During a press conference in Perth, Australia this morning, Air Chief Marshal (retired) Angus Houston who heads the Joint Agency Coordination Centre announced that the so-called “black box finder” deployed from the Australian vessel Ocean Shield detected and maintained two signals for two significant periods.
“The first contact was held for two hours and twenty minutes before it was lost.
“A second contact was detected and held after the Ocean Shield turned around and was held for 13 minutes,” Houston said today.
Houston pointed out that the two independent signals were especially encouraging as this was consistent with the two separate recorders that were on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
But he also urged for the information to be treated with caution, noting that several steps remained before it could be ascertained if the signals are from the plane’s so-called “black boxes” and whether the wreckage was in the search area.
It was still necessary for the towed pinger locator to reacquire the signals — if still possible — to allow the Ocean Shield to fix the search position before it is able to deploy the Bluefin 21 submersibles to try and detect the plane’s wreckage, Houston explained when saying that debris would be vital to determine if searchers are looking in the right area.
The waters in which the signals were detected was also as deep as 4,500m — around the maximum operating range of the Bluefin 21 — which could further delay the search for debris.
“I need to be honest, it will take some days to confirm if this is from MH370; in deep waters nothing happens fast,” Houston added.
The head of the JACC explained that the TPL took at least three hours to turn around, cutting into the valuable time left to receive the signals from the plane.
The signals were first detected by the Chinese search vessel Haixun 01 on Friday, and again on Saturday but the Ocean Shield was not immediately deployed to the area as it had also received an “acoustic signal” of its own when it was searching a different area.
The searchers are racing against time to find the crucial flight data and cockpit voice recorders that may hold the only clues in the “unprecedented mystery” of the disappearance of the MAS plane that had been carrying 239 people on board.
Batteries powering the emergency locator transmitters equipped on the black boxes have a rated life of 30 days; the plane went missing on March 8 or 31 days ago.
“We have a promising lead but we have yet to get the confirming evidence; that will be a long process,” Houston added.
