Malaysian - 7. april - Det bekreftes at signalene er fra en FDR/CVR pinger

A locator has detected signals consistent with those emitted by black boxes, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says. 

07 April 2014| last updated at 01:08PM

MH370 Tragedy: Possible signals from black boxes heard

PERTH: U.S. Navy equipment has picked up signals consistent with the pings from aircraft black boxes, an Australian search official said today, 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, called it “very encouraging” but said it may take days to confirm whether signals picked up by the ship Ocean Shield are indeed from the flight recorders on Flight 370.
The Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, using a U.S. Navy towed pinger locator, detected the sounds on two occasions over a period totaling more than two and a half hours.
“Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it’s the probably the best information that we have had,” Houston said at a news conference.
“This would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder,” he said.
He said the position of the noise needs to be further refined, and then an underwater autonomous vehicle can be sent in to investigate.
“It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370. In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.”

PERTH: Three separate but fleeting sounds from deep in the Indian Ocean offered new hope Sunday in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, as officials rushed to determine whether they were signals from the plane’s black boxes before their beacons fall silent.

The head of the multinational search being conducted off Australia’s west coast confirmed that a Chinese ship had picked up electronic pulsing signals twice in a small patch of the search zone, once on Friday and again on Saturday.  

On Sunday, an Australian ship carrying sophisticated deep-sea sound equipment picked up a third signal in a different part of the massive search area.  

“This is an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to treat carefully,” retired Australian Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search, told reporters in Perth.  

He stressed that the signals had not been verified as being linked to Flight 370, which was traveling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board.  

“We have an acoustic event. The job now is to determine the significance of that event. It does not confirm or deny the presence of the aircraft locator on the bottom of the ocean,” Houston said, referring to each of the three transmissions.  

“We are dealing with very deep water, we are dealing with an environment where sometimes you can get false indications,” he said. “There are lots of noises in the ocean, and sometimes the acoustic equipment can rebound, echo if you like.”  

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that the patrol vessel Haixun 01 detected a “pulse signal” Friday in the southern Indian Ocean at 37.5 kilohertz — the same frequency emitted by the flight data recorders aboard the missing plane.  

Houston confirmed the report, and said the Haixun 01 detected a signal again on Saturday within 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) of the original signal, for 90 seconds. He said China also reported seeing white objects floating in the sea in the area.  

The British navy ship HMS Echo, which is fitted with sophisticated sound-locating equipment, is moving to the area where the signals were picked up and will probably get there early Monday, Houston said.  

The Australian navy’s Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy, will also head there, but will first investigate the sound it picked up in its current region, about 300 nautical miles (555 kilometers) away, he said.  

Australian air force assets are also being deployed into the Haixun 01’s area to try to confirm or discount the signals’ relevance to the search, Houston said.  

In Kuala Lumpur, families of passengers aboard the missing plane attended a prayer service on Sunday that also drew thousands of Malaysian sympathizers.

Read more: MH370 Tragedy: More ships rush to probe signals in plane search - Latest - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-mh370-tragedy-font-more-ships-rush-to-probe-signals-in-plane-search-1.553084?cache=03%3Fpage%3D0%3Fpage%3D0%3Fkey%3DKualaLumpur%2F7.201724%3Fpage%3D0#ixzz2y9pYPlKK