Another signal boosts hopes of finding MH370
Print Edition
AN Australian aircraft yesterday detected what may be the fifth signal coming from a man-made device deep in the Indian Ocean, adding to hopes searchers will soon pinpoint the object’s location and send down a robotic vehicle to confirm if it’s a black box from a missing Malaysian jet.
The Australian air force P-3 Orion, which has been dropping sonar buoys into the water near where four earlier sounds were heard, picked up a “possible signal” that may be from a man-made source, said Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search off Australia’s west coast.
“The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight,” Houston said.
If confirmed, the signal would further narrow the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
The Australian ship Ocean Shield picked up two underwater sounds on Tuesday, and two sounds it detected on Saturday were determined to be consistent with the pings emitted from a plane’s flight recorders, or “black boxes.”
The Australian air force has been dropping sonar buoys to maximize the sound-detectors operating in a search zone that is now the size of the city of Los Angeles. Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter Leavy said each buoy is dangling a hydrophone listening device about 300 meters below the surface. Each buoy transmits its data via radio back to the plane.
The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300 square kilometer patch of the ocean floor, and narrowing the area as much as possible is crucial before an unmanned submarine can be sent to create a sonar map of a potential debris field on the seabed.
The search for floating debris on the ocean surface was narrowed to its smallest size yet yesterday — 57,900 square kilometers, or about a quarter the size it was a few days ago. Fourteen planes and 13 ships were looking for floating debris, about 2,300 kilometers northwest of Perth.
Tighter patterns
Crews hunting for debris on the surface have already looked in the area they were crisscrossing yesterday, but were moving in tighter patterns, Houston said.
On Wednesday, he said he was hopeful crews would find the aircraft — or what’s left of it — in the “not-too-distant future.”
Meanwhile, a Malaysian government official said last night that investigators have concluded it was the pilot who spoke the last words to air traffic control, “Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero,” and that his voice showed no signs of duress.
A re-examination of the last communication from the cockpit was initiated after authorities reversed their initial statement that the co-pilot was speaking different words.
Investigators suspect the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity, but the content of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders is essential to solving the mystery of why.
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