Signals detected from sea could be from missing aircraft

An Australian naval ship searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian Ocean has detected underwater signals in the last two days "consistent with" those of a plane's data and cockpit voice recorders, officials said yesterday.

"This is a most promising lead," Angus Houston, lead coordinator of the search, said at a news conference in Perth, Australia. He said it is "probably the best information that we have had" in the search, which has migrated across a vast area of the Indian Ocean. "I'm much more optimistic than I was a week ago," he said.

Officials said determining the nature and source of the signals might take several days, and that officials were still far from confirming the location of the aircraft.

Finding the Boeing 777-200 using sonic technology would be extraordinary considering the batteries in the recorders, known as black boxes, are expected to expire as soon as this week. When that happens the boxes’ sonic beacons will cease, making discovery far more difficult.

Searchers began using the underwater listening technology last Friday, in a last-ditch effort to hear the black boxes’ signals before they faded.

The signals were picked up by Ocean Shield , a Royal Australian Navy vessel, using technology operated by a US Navy team. They occurred over about five-and-a-half hours late Sunday northwest of Perth.

The sensors first detected the signal – pings at one-second intervals – in the late afternoon and held it for more than two hours, officials said.

The ship lost contact, turned, and picked up the signal again for about 13 minutes. On the return leg, sensors detected two pings coming from different locations, suggesting transmissions from both black boxes.

The announcement seemed to offer the best indication so far that, after more than four weeks of searching across vast areas of sea and land, officials might finally be zeroing in on evidence of the aircraft and its fate.

If the search teams can define a more precise area where the black boxes might be, they will then deploy a remote-controlled submarine, a Bluefin-21, to map the seabed. If the search teams are unable to fix the location using the listening equipment, then they might use the Bluefin to “have a look”.

Officials warned that false alerts could be set off by sea life – including whales – or noise from ships, among other causes. – (New York Times service) .