‘Best leads so far’ in search for Malaysia plane

By STEPHEN MCGINTY
Published 8th Apr 2014, 01:05 BST
The chief coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center retired Chief Air Marshall Angus Houston reports the towed pinger locator deployed from the Ocean Shield has detected two signals consistent with those emitted by an in flight back box recorder, in the northern part of the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: APThe chief coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center retired Chief Air Marshall Angus Houston reports the towed pinger locator deployed from the Ocean Shield has detected two signals consistent with those emitted by an in flight back box recorder, in the northern part of the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: AP
The chief coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center retired Chief Air Marshall Angus Houston reports the towed pinger locator deployed from the Ocean Shield has detected two signals consistent with those emitted by an in flight back box recorder, in the northern part of the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: AP
AN Australian ship searching for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has detected signals which have given rescue teams “the most promising leads so far”.

The search vessel, Ocean Shield, picked up the signals – which could be coming from the black box flight recorders – twice, including once for more than two hours.

Angus Houston, the retired air chief marshall leading the search, said there is hope that teams are homing in on the crash site.

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Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s acting transport minister, yesterday said he was “cautiously hopeful that there will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours”.

The missing plane was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March, but is now believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, more than 1,000 miles off the coast of Australia.

The search vessel detected the signals on Sunday using a pinger locator towed behind the ship at a depth of more than a mile.

A signal was picked up on two occasions. On the first, it was held for two hours and 20 minutes before being lost. The ship then turned around and re-covered the area, and the signal was detected for 13 minutes.