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| A woman ties a message card for passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Saturday, April 5, 2014. Search teams racing against time to find the flight recorders from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet crisscrossed another patch of the Indian Ocean on Saturday, four weeks to the day after the airliner vanished. |
PERTH, Australia
(AP) -- A Chinese ship involved in the hunt for the missing
Malaysian jetliner reported hearing a "pulse signal" Saturday in
southern Indian Ocean waters with the same frequency emitted by the
plane's data recorders, as Malaysia vowed not to give up the search for
the aircraft.
The Australian government agency
coordinating the search for the missing plane said early Sunday that
the electronic pulse signals reportedly detected by the Chinese ship are
consistent with those of an aircraft black box. But retired Air Chief
Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the search coordination agency, said
they "cannot verify any connection" at this stage between the electronic
signals and the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
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, in an increasingly urgent hunt for
debris and the "black box" recorders that hold vital information about
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's last hours.
After
weeks of fruitless looking, the multinational search team is racing
against time to find the sound-emitting beacons in the flight and
cockpit voice recorders that could help unravel the mystery of the
plane's fate. The beacons in the black boxes emit "pings" so they can be
more easily found, but the batteries only last for about a month.
A
Chinese ship that is part of the search effort detected a "pulse
signal" in southern Indian Ocean waters, China's official Xinhua News
Agency reported. Xinhua, however, said it had not yet been determined
whether the signal was related to the missing plane, citing the China
Maritime Search and Rescue Center.
Xinhua said
a black box detector deployed by the ship, Haixun 01, picked up a
signal at 37.5 kilohertz (cycles per second), the same frequency emitted
by flight data recorders.
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.
Earlier
Saturday, Xinhua reported that a Chinese military aircraft searching
for the missing aircraft spotted "white floating objects" not far from
where the electronic signals were detected.
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.
Houston
said the Australian-led Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the
search operation could not yet verify the Chinese reports and had asked
China for "any further information that may be relevant." He said the
Australian air force was considering deploying more aircraft to the area
where the Chinese ship reportedly detected the sounds.
"I
have been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a
Chinese ship in the search area. The characteristics reported are
consistent with the aircraft black box," Houston said, adding that the
Australian-led agency had also received reports of the white objects
sighted on the ocean surface about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from where
the electronic signals were detected.
"However,
there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects
are related to the missing aircraft," Houston said.
Still,
Malaysia's defense minister and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin
Hussein, was hopeful.
"Another night of hope - praying hard," he
tweeted in response to the latest discoveries.
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.
Honeywell
Aerospace, which made the boxes in the missing Malaysia Airlines plane,
said the Underwater Acoustic Beacons on both the flight data recorder
and cockpit voice recorder operate at a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz plus
or minus 1 kilohertz.
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."
The Boeing 777 disappeared March 8
while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people
aboard. So far, no trace of the jet has been found.
Hishammuddin,
the Malaysian defense 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.
He
said an independent investigator would be appointed to lead a team that
will try to determine what happened to Flight 370. The team will
include three groups: One 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 investigation
team will include officials and experts from several nations, including
Australia - which as the nearest country to the search zone is currently
heading the hunt - China, the United States, Britain and France,
Hishammuddin said.
Officials have said the
hunt for the wreckage is among the hardest ever undertaken, and will get
much harder if there are no confirmed debris sightings and the beacons
fall silent before they are found.
If that
happens, 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 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 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 Saturday, 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 1 to 5 knots (1 to 6 mph).
Australia's
Houston 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.
