Have they found flight MH370? Search ship detects a black box 'pulse signal' from 3.5 miles below southern Indian Ocean and Chinese air force plane spots '20 pieces of debris'

A Chinese ship that is part of the multinational search effort looking for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has detected a 'pulse signal' in southern Indian Ocean waters, it has emerged.

China's official news agency said a black box detector deployed by the vessel, Haixun 01, picked up a signal today.
The ship said that the signal it picked up has a frequency of 37.5kHz per second, which is the type that the aircraft's black box would send out.
Tonight, Australian officials confirmed that the signals the Chinese ship detected are consistent with an aircraft black box, strengthening the prospect of a dramatic breakthrough in the hunt for the Boeing 777.

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A Chinese ship is said to have detected a 'pulse signal' in the southern Indian Ocean today

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A white floating object spotted by Chinese air force in the southern Indian Ocean today

However, there is no immediate evidence that the signal is linked to the missing jet.
Flight MH370 vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board while it was en route to Beijing, China, from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Dozens of ships and aircraft from several nations are involved in the search in the Indian Ocean, some 1,500 miles west of Perth, Western Australia.
The reported signal gives the first ray of hope that a breakthrough has been achieved in the search after numerous heartbreaking discoveries of nothing but rubbish floating on the ocean, rather than debris from the aircraft.        
The report said it was not established whether that the signal was related to the missing jet.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, confirmed that the frequency emitted by Flight 370's black boxes were 37.5 kilohertz and said authorities were verifying the report.
Tonight the Australian-led joint agency co-ordinating the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner said the pulse signals were consistent with a black box flight recorder.
But Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said that the agency cannot verify any connection between the signals and Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
A Chinese air force plane also taking part in the search today spotted a number of white floating objects in the search area today, according to China's state media. The plane photographed the objects over a period of 20 minutes after spotting them at 11:05am local time.
Mr Houston said the joint agency has no confirmation the floating objects are related to the missing aircraft.

There are many clicks, buzzes and other sounds in the ocean from animals, but the 37.5 kilohertz pulse was selected for underwater locator beacons on black boxes because there is nothing else in the sea that would naturally make that sound, said William Waldock, an expert on search and rescue who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
'They picked that (frequency) so there wouldn't be false alarms from other things in the ocean,' he said.
Waldock cautioned that 'it's possible it could be an aberrant signal' from a nuclear submarine if there was one in the vicinity.
If the sounds can be verified, it would reduce the search area to about 10 square kilometers (4 square miles), Waldock said. Unmanned robot subs with sidescan sonar would then be sent into the water to try to locate the wreckage, he said.
John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member, called the report 'exciting,' but cautioned that 'there is an awful lot of noise in the ocean'.
'One ship, one ping doesn't make a success story,' he said. 'It will have to be explored. I guarantee you there are other resources being moved into the area to see if it can be verified.'
Malaysia vowed today that it would not give up on trying to find the missing jetliner and announced details of a multinational investigation team to solve the aviation mystery, as the search for the plane entered its fifth week.
Military and civilian planes, ships with deep-sea searching equipment and a British nuclear submarine scoured a remote patch of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast.
The hunt for debris and the 'black box' recorders that hold vital information about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's last hours has become increasingly urgent.
After weeks of fruitless looking, officials face the daunting prospect that sound-emitting beacons in the flight and voice recorders will soon fall silent as their batteries die after sounding electronic 'pings' for a month.

 

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister and acting transport minister, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the cost of mounting the search was immaterial compared to providing solace for the families of those on board by establishing what happened.
'I can only speak for Malaysia, and Malaysia will not stop looking for MH370,' Hishammuddin said.
The Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. So far, no trace of the jet has been found.
At the media briefing, Hishammuddin announced that an independent investigator would be appointed and three main areas of inquiry would be pursued.
One team will look at airworthiness, including maintenance, structures and systems; another will examine operations, such as flight recorders and meteorology; and a third will consider medical and human factors.
The overall investigation team will include officials and experts from Australia — which as the nearest country to the search zone is currently heading the hunt, with other nations' help — as well as China, the United States, Britain and France, Hishammuddin said.
A multinational team is desperately trying to find debris floating in the water or faint sound signals from the recorders that could lead them to the missing plane and unravel the mystery of its fate.
Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as officials can then use data on currents to backtrack to where the plane hit the water, and where the flight recorders may be.

Beacons in the black boxes emit 'pings' so they can be more easily found, but the batteries only last about a month.
Officials have said the hunt for the wreckage is among the hardest ever undertaken, and will get much harder still if the beacons fall silent before they are found.
'Where we're at right now, four weeks since this plane disappeared, we're much, much closer,' said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, the editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com.
'But, frustratingly, we're still miles away from finding it. We need to find some piece of debris on the water; we need to pick up the ping.'
If it doesn't happen, the only hope for finding the plane may be a full survey of the Indian Ocean floor, an operation that would take years and an enormous international operation.
Hishammuddin said there were no more new satellite images or data that can provide new leads for searchers. The focus now is fully on the ocean search, he said.
Two ships, the Australian navy's Ocean Shield and the British HMS Echo, carrying sophisticated equipment that can hear the recorders' pings, returned on Saturday to an area investigators hope is close to where the plane went down.
They concede the area they have identified is a best guess.
Up to 13 military and civilian planes and nine other ships took part in the search, the Australian agency coordinating the search said.

Because the U.S. Navy's pinger locator can pick up signals to a depth of 6,100 meters (20,000 feet), it should be able to hear the plane's data recorders even if they are in the deepest part of the search zone — about 5,800 meters (19,000 feet).
But that's only if the locator gets within range of the black boxes — a tough task, given the size of the search area and the fact that the pinger locator must be dragged slowly through the water at just one to five knots (1 to 6mph).
Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the joint agency coordinating the operation, acknowledged the search area was essentially a best guess, and noted the time when the plane's locator beacons would shut down was 'getting pretty close'.
The overall search area is a 217,000-square-kilometer (84,000-square-mile) zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,700 kilometers (1,100 miles) northwest of the western Australian city of Perth.

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