Aussie ship closes in on black box

PERTH. — Two fresh signals have been picked up in the search for the missing Malaysian flight MH370, raising hopes yesterday that the wreckage will be found within days even as black box batteries start to expire.
Australian ship Ocean Shield detected the signals on Tuesday to match a pair of transmissions picked up over the weekend that have been analysed as consistent with signals from the plane’s flight data recorder, the head of the search said.

“Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire the signals on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and later last night,” said Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

The Australian ship has now picked up four transmissions, crucial information as searchers try to pinpoint the crash zone for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Officials had feared that the signals which were initially picked up might not be detected again, particularly since the batteries on the black box tracking beacons have a normal lifespan of about 30 days.

The new transmissions, found in the same broad area as the previous two, lasted for five minutes and 32 seconds and about seven minutes respectively, Houston said.
“Yesterday’s signals will assist in better defining a reduced and much more manageable search area on the ocean floor,” Houston said.

“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370.”

Houston, however, again urged caution for the sake of the families of those aboard the flight which mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and said the search for more signals would go on.

“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area and in a matter of days we’ll be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370,” Houston told reporters.

For families of MH370 passengers, who marked the one-month anniversary of the plane’s disappearance on Tuesday, the suspense has been excruciating. — AFP.