Zee Media Bureau/Supriya Jha
Perth: With optimism level high among the searchers after the detection of more underwater pings possibly form the ill-fated plane`s black box, the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 resumed on Thursday with 14 planes and 13 ships busy looking for the plane.
In another confidence-boosting development, a fresh signal was picked by an Australian P-3 Orion aircraft in the vicinity of the same area where Australian Navy ship Ocean Shield had earlier captured four audio signals, two on Saturday and two on Tuesday.
According to the JACC officials, the signal requires further analysis but it could also be from a "man-made source".
According to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the planned search area by the AMSA covers an area of about 57,923 square kilometres - the smallest search zone scanned so far - where up to 10 military aircraft, four civil aircraft and 13 ships will carry out the operations.
The weather is not expected to create hurdles in the search despite the presiction of moderate south easterly winds was the visibility will be fair (5000 metres) during the showers, said the JACC.
The underwater search will continue today with Australian Navy ship Ocean Shield at the northern end of the defined search area, while Chinese ship Haixun 01 and HMS Echo at the southern end.
Australian ship Ocean Shield had on Saturday detected two pings, and two more electronic signals consistent with an aircraft`s black box were said to be heard on Tuesday.
The pings are being called as the best lead so far and they wil help in narrowing the search area where buoys have been dropped for calculation of the plane`s final resting place.
The JACC informed that large number of objects were spotted in yesterday`s search but only few of them were recovered and none of the recovered items were believed to be associated with MH370.
The search operations for flight MH370 that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board on way to Beijing, have so far been largely without any solid piece of evidence as no debris has been retrieved.
As no debris has been retrieved so far, the experts of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre have suggested two possible reasons, reports the news.com.au.
The report cites the experts` opinion that "Boeing 777 was either flown under control into the ocean, largely intact and sank to the bottom in one piece or its wreckage was scattered by a cyclone".
In second case, the cyclone might have scattered the debris of the plane as there were fears of cyclone Gillian hampering the search and rescue operations.
Detection of four pulse signals so far, from the search area, have sparked optimism among the officials who yesterday exuded confidence about being in the right search area.
In a press conference, JACC chief Angus Houston said that they were optimistic about finding “the aircraft, or what`s left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future".
"I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370," he said.
Even though Wednesday came with a whiff of positive news for the MH370 investigators as two fresh signals were heard, the search coordinator chief Angus Houston cautioned that the signals were getting weaker, which could mean two things - either the searchers were moving away from the search area or the batteries of the black box pinger were dying.
Officials say they will continue using the towed pinger locator aboard Australian Navy ship Ocean Shield until they are absolutely sure that the batteries have expired.
Time is running out for locating the black box of the Malaysian jet as the batteries are said to be past their advertised shelf life as it has been more than a month since plane`s disappearance.
