Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Chinese ship discovers pulse signal in south Indian Ocean

 
Searching: Chinese ship Nan Hai Jiu looking for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
Reuters5 April 2014

A Chinese patrol ship searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 detected a pulse signal in the south Indian Ocean on Saturday, state media reported.

The 37.5 kHz per second pulse is currently the international standard frequency for the underwater locator beacon on a plane's "black box".

A black box detector deployed by the Chinese patrol vessel Haixun 01 picked up the signal at around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude. It has yet to be established whether it is related to the missing jet. A Chinese air force plane also spotted a number of white floating objects in the search area.

The announcement came after Malaysia's defence minister said early today the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 will continue "with the same level of vigour and intensity."

Hishammuddin Hussein said: "We will continue to focus, with all our efforts, on finding the aircraft."

He said there are no more new satellite images or data that can provide new leads, and the focus is now fully on the ocean search.

The search for Malaysia Airlines MH370

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The multinational team was desperately trying to find debris floating in the water or faint sound signals from the recorders that could lead them to the aircraft.

Beacons in the black boxes emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, but the batteries only last about a month.

And officials say the more time that passes before any floating wreckage is found, the harder it will be to find the plane itself.

Two ships with sophisticated equipment that can hear the recorders' pings were deployed for the first time yesterday along a 150-mile (241km) route investigators hope may be close to the spot where they believe the plane went down.

Weather conditions in the area, which have regularly hampered crews trying to spot debris, were fair with some rain expected, the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre said.

Meanwhile, the Air Line Pilots Association, a union which represents 30,000 pilots in North America, said that the Malaysia Airlines tragedy should lead to higher standards of plane tracking technology being adopted by the airline industry.

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