April 5, 2014 -- Updated 0700 GMT (1500 HKT)
Four weeks to the day since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, the trawling for clues goes on. FULL STORY
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MH370: COULD THIS BE IT?
Pulse signal, new objects discovered
In what may be a breakthrough in the search for Flight 370, a Chinese
patrol ship in the southern Indian Ocean reportedly hears the pulse
signal used by so-called black boxes.
- Is it or isn't it? | Relatives react
- Expert adds note of caution
- Quest: This would be remarkable
- Map shows new search area
New findings may refocus search for Malaysia Airlines jet
April 5, 2014 -- Updated 2309 GMT (0709 HKT)
Chinese ships detect pulse signal
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- "It ought to be easy to rule it in or rule it out," says CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo
- Deployment of Australian air force assets to search area "is being considered," official says
- "This could be a variety of things," says oceanographer Simon Boxall
- Chinese ship hears pulse signal in southern Indian Ocean
"I have been advised that
a series of sounds have been detected by a Chinese ship in the search
area," Angus Houston, the chief coordinator of Australia's Joint Agency
Coordination Centre, said in a prepared statement.
"The characteristics
reported are consistent with the aircraft black box," he said, adding
that a number of white objects were sited about 56 miles (90 kilometers)
away.
"However, there is no
confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related
to the missing aircraft," the retired air chief marshal said.
China: Pulse signals lasted over a minute
China: Ship detects pulse signal
Expert: 'Skeptical' pulse signal located
Friends can't ID voice on 370 recording
Neither the Australian
Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) nor the
Australian Transport Safety Bureau can verify any connection to the
missing aircraft, the statement said.
The RCC in Australia has spoken to its counterpart in China and asked for any further relevant information, it said.
"The deployment of RAAF
assets to the area where the Chinese ship detected the sounds is being
considered," he added, referring to the Royal Australian Air Force.
The hand-held,
ping-locating technology used by the Chinese ship operates at a maximum
depth of 600 feet, compared to the towed pinger on an Australian search
vessel that goes up to 20,000 feet deep and away from surface noise,
according to experts.
The state-run Chinese
news agency, Xinhua, said a detector deployed by the Haixun 01 patrol
ship picked up the signal around 25 degrees south latitude and 101
degrees east longitude.
That puts it about 1,020
miles (1,640 kilometers) west-northwest of Perth, Australia, between
current and previous search zones, and about 220 miles (354 kilometers)
south of the closest of the three areas searched Saturday, said Judson
Jones, a meteorologist with CNN International.
A previous search area was 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of the area.
"It's not the prime
search area, but it's not out of the question that this could possibly
be from the black box," said David Gallo, who is with the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution.
The location lies along
one of two tracks along which investigators had postulated the plane
flew, noted CNN aviation analyst retired Lt. Col. Michael Kay.
"It is, again, more positive evidence," he said. "That is good news."
White objects afloat near the search area
Also found Saturday --
spotted by a Chinese air force search plane -- were white objects
floating near the search area, about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) from
Perth, Xinhua said. Those were presumably the same objects cited by
Houston.
Investigators have
failed to link any of the many previous sightings of debris to the
missing plane. But the proximity of the two finds raised hopes that this
time might be different.
The ship first detected a
signal Friday but couldn't record it because the signal stopped
abruptly, a Shanghai-based Communist Party newspaper said. The signal
detected Saturday, the Jiefang Daily said, occurred at 3:57 p.m. Beijing
time (3:57 a.m. ET) and lasted about a minute and a half. It was not
clear whether the signal had anything to do with the missing plane.
A China Central
Television correspondent aboard the Haixun-01 (pronounced "high shuen")
reported that the 37.5 kHz signal was detected for a minute and a half.
Australia leads Flight 370 search
Weather conditions and the MH370 search
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
The signal "is the
standard beacon frequency" for the plane's cockpit voice recorder and
the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger
manufacturer Dukane Seacom.
"They're identical."
The frequency was chosen
for use in the recorders "to give that standout quality that does not
get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the
ocean."
But he said he would
like to see more evidence. "I'd like to see some additional assets on
site quickly -- maybe some sonobuoys," he said, referring to 5-inch-long
(13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships.
And he said he was
puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the
recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon.
Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane.
"It ought to be easy to
rule it in or rule it out, and they ought to go do it," said Mary
Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and a former inspector general for the
U.S. Department of Transportation.
A source at the Australian Defence Force told CNN that it got word of the report around noon Saturday (midnight Friday ET).
Saturday's leads came as
concern was rising that the batteries powering the missing Boeing 777's
locator pingers would soon go dead. The plane disappeared on March 8;
its batteries were guaranteed to work for 30 days underwater, and are
predicted to die slowly over the following days. Monday marks day 30.
The batteries on Flight 370's black boxes were due to be replaced in June, the Malaysia Airlines chief executive said Saturday.
"We can confirm there is a maintenance program. Batteries are replaced prior to expiration," Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.
The tentative nature of
the report was not lost on one Chinese relative of one of those aboard.
"There is not confirmation, and we are all waiting patiently," the
relative told CNN Producer Judy Kwon in a text message.
Still, Malaysia's acting
transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, was sanguine: "Another night
of hope-praying hard," he tweeted in response to the discovery.
"We've had a lot of red
herrings, hyperbole on this whole search," said oceanographer Simon
Boxall, a lecturer in ocean and earth science at the University of
Southampton told CNN. "I'd really like to see this data confirmed."
If this proves to be
what investigators have been searching for, "then the possibility of
recovering the plane -- or at least the black boxes -- goes from being
one in a million to almost certain," he said.
Prime ministers offer no answers
No guarantees MH370 will ever be found
Are we searching in the right area?
But, he added, "It could be a false signal."
CNN aviation analyst
David Soucie was less skeptical. "This is a pinger," the airplane
accident investigator said. "I've been doing this a lot of years, and I
can't think of anything else it could be."
Committees being formed
The announcement came
nearly a month after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, and on
the same day that the nation's acting transportation minister said three
committees were being formed to tackle the disappearance of the flight.
One will tend to the
families of passengers aboard the missing flight, the second will
oversee the investigation team and a third committee will handle the
deployment of assets, said Hishammuddin Hussein.
Malaysia will also appoint an independent investigator to lead an investigation team, the acting minister said.
The team will include an
airworthiness group to look at issues such as maintenance records, and
an operations group to examine such aspects as flight recorders and
operations. A medical and human factors team will investigate issues
such as psychology, he said.
The team will include
representatives from Malaysia, Australia, China, the United States, the
United Kingdom and France, he said.
Hishammuddin also
addressed "unfounded allegations made against Malaysia," which "include
the extraordinary assertion that Malaysian authorities were somehow
complicit in what happened to MH370."
He added, "I should like to state, for the record, that these allegations are completely untrue."
Hishammuddin pointed to a
statement from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which says
Malaysia has "done its level best" in an operation that "is the biggest
and most complex we have ever seen."
The minister, who had
earlier briefed ASEAN ministers and the United States at a joint defense
forum, thanked the United States for its "unwavering support" and said
the ministers had pledged their continued cooperation.
The hunt for evidence continued Saturday -- both on the surface of the southern Indian Ocean and below it.
The British submarine HMS Tireless is in the search area, Hishammuddin said.
A parallel search of the
hard drives of a flight simulator found in the home of one of the
pilots turned up nothing conclusive, a U.S. official with knowledge of
the investigation told CNN on Friday.
There was no "we got it" information, though there were some "curious" things, the official said.
The captain, veteran
pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had programmed alternate routes into the
simulator, but he appeared to have done so to come up with plans of
action in case of emergencies, the official said.
The searches appear to be what an experienced and professional pilot would do, the official said.
The hunt goes on
In the Indian Ocean, the hunt was continuing.
The British Royal Navy
survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield
searched Friday for the plane's pingers and possible wreckage on the
ocean floor -- 6,500 feet (2000 meters) to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters)
below the surface.
The search was along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said Houston, Australia's chief coordinator.
The Ocean Shield has high-tech gear borrowed from the United States. That includes a Bluefin-21, which can scour the ocean floor for wreckage, and a Towed Pinger Locator 25, with its underwater device to detect pings from the jet's voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).
"It is a very slow
proceeding," U.S. Navy Capt. Mark M. Matthews said of the second tool,
which is towed behind a vessel typically moving at 1 to 5 knots.
Bill Schofield, an
Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders,
said: "If they do find it, I think it'll be remarkable."
Up to 10 military planes
and three civilian aircraft -- in addition to 11 ships -- were looking
Saturday for any sign of Flight 370, according to the Australian
government.
The search area was
nearly 84,000 square miles (218,000 square kilometers), which is
slightly less than the area searched Friday, and focused some 1,050
miles northwest of Perth. This is about 50 miles farther from the
western Australian city than had been the case the day before.
Who's talking?
The cockpit conversation
recording of the flight has been played to friends of the pilot and
first officer, as well as to other pilots, in order to identify who was
speaking, a source close to the investigation said Saturday.
But the voices have not been identified, the source said.
The recording was not played to the families of the pilot and first officer, the source said.
Officials have repeatedly said that the search may not conclude soon.
In the case of Air
France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009,
officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But
it took nearly two years for them to find the main pieces of wreckage,
the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board.
With Flight 370, the search teams have had even fewer clues.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described it as the most difficult search "in human history."
Investigations into the
227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any
of them might have been behind the disappearance.
CNN's Laura Smith-Spark, Tom Cohen, Miles
O'Brien, Pam Boykoff, David Molko, Will Ripley, Ingrid Formanek, Kevin
Wang, Ben Brumfield, Pam Brown and Elizabeth Joseph contributed to this
report.
COPY http://edition.cnn.com
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