Perth: An Australian aircraft hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet picked up a new underwater signal Thursday while searching the same part of the Indian Ocean where earlier sounds were detected that were consistent with an aircraft's black boxes.
The Australian air force P-3 Orion, which has been dropping sound-locating buoys into the water near where the original sounds were heard, picked up a “possible signal” that may be from a man-made source, said Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search off Australia's west coast.
“The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight,” Houston said in a statement.
If confirmed, it would be the fifth underwater signal detected in the hunt for Flight 370, which vanished on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard.
On Tuesday, the Australian vessel Ocean Shield picked up two underwater sounds, and an analysis of two other sounds detected in the same general area on Saturday showed they were consistent with a plane's flight recorders, or “black boxes.”