A new underwater acoustic signal possibly from the crashed Malaysian plane was detected on Thursday, raising hopes of an early breakthrough in the arduous hunt for the jet as searchers zeroed in on a smaller area in the Indian Ocean to find its “final resting place”.
An Australian naval aircraft picked up an underwater signal in the same area where searchers in ships previously detected sounds consistent with a plane’s black box.
The development came on the 33rd day of the search for the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 — that vanished mysteriously from radar screens on March 8 with 239 people on board, including five Indians.
While conducting an acoustic search this afternoon, an RAAF AP-3C Orion aircraft detected a possible signal in the vicinity of the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield, said Angus Houston, head of the Perth-based Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) which is leading the search.
“The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight but shows potential of being from a man-made source,” he said. Houston on Wednesday expressed optimism that search teams will “find the aircraft or what’s left of the aircraft in the not too distant future”.
“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370,” Houston said.
Finding the black box is crucial to know why the Beijing- bound Boeing 777-200 veered off from its route after taking off from Kuala lumpur.
The batteries of the black box flight recorders have a life of about 30 days, meaning they either might have been or are on the verge of being drained out.