Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said today that searchers were confident they knew the position of the black box flight recorders from missing flight MH370, but cautioned this was not the same as recovering wreckage.
"We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorders to be within some kilometres," he said in a speech in Shanghai, China.
"Still, confidence in the approximate position of the black boxes is not the same as recovering wreckage from almost four and a half kilometres beneath the sea or finally determining all that happened on the flight."
However, Angus Houston, head of the Australian search, said that the analysis of the signal was unlikely to be related to the aircraft's black box recorders, according to The Malaysian Insider.
"On the information I have available to me, there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370," Houston added, following unconfirmed reports in some media that the black boxes had been located.
The Australian agency overseeing the search said it would use the most sophisticated resources at its disposal on the small search area after a new signal that could be from the plane's black box recorders was detected yesterday.
The latest ping seems be in line with four previous "pings" detected by a US navy "Towed Pinger Locator" towed by Australia's Ocean Shield vessel.
However, the batteries in the black boxes have already reached the end of their 30-day expected life, hence efforts to swiftly locate them on the murky ocean floor are critical, Abbott said.
"We are now getting to the stage where the signal from what we are very confident is the black box is starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires," he said.
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