Plane Search Team Report 'Promising Lead'

A ship searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has detected signals "consistent" with aircraft black boxes.

The team hunting for Flight MH370 say the underwater sounds picked up by the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield is a "promising lead" in the search, but had yet to get "confirming evidence".

Search co-ordinators stressed it was in very deep water - 4,500 metres - which is at the limit of the equipment being used.

Angus Houston, the former Australian defence chief who is heading the search, said: "The towed pinger locator deployed from the Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield has detected signals consistent with those emitted from aircraft black boxes."

Stressing the need for further confirmation, he said: "I am much more optimistic than I was a week ago."

But he added: "We are talking about a long operation here and we have yet to find the aircraft."

The position of the sound needed to be further pinpointed, and then an underwater drone could be sent down to investigate.

Ocean Shield detected the sounds on two occasions over a period totalling more than two-and-a-half hours.

Mr Houston said: "Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it's the probably the best information that we have had.

"This would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder."

He went on: "It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370.

"In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.

"I would want more confirmation before we say this is it. Without wreckage, we can't say it's definitely here. We've got to go down and have a look and hopefully we'll find it somewhere in the area that we narrowed to."

The plane vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board.

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