Missing jet: Search effort continues after new discovery

Perth, April 6: The month-long hunt for the missing Malaysian plane continued today after a Chinese ship reported the detection of electronic pulse signals possibly related to the black box of the flight MH370 in southern Indian Ocean.

Some 10 military planes, two civil jets and 13 ships will look for any trace of flight MH370 aided by good weather with a cloud base of 2,500 feet and visibility greater than 10 km, according to the Joint Agency Coordination Center coordinating the operations, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The search area is approximately 216,000 square km, about 2,000 km northwest of Perth. It is about 300 km farther from the western coastal city than the area searched on the day before, it said.

Reports overnight that a black box detector deployed by Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 has detected electronic pulse signals in the Indian Ocean related to MH370 "cannot be verified at this point in time", the JACC said in a statement.

Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 had yesterday detected a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5kHz per second in southern Indian Ocean waters. The black box detector deployed by the Haixun 01 picked up the signal at around 25 degrees south Latitude and 101 degrees east Longitude.

Also yesterday, a Chinese air force plane spotted a number of white floating objects in the search area. The plane photographed the objects over a period of 20 minutes after spotting them at 11:05 local time.The detection has been reported to the JACC, the news agency reported.

The Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 - carrying 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals - had mysteriously vanished on March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

The mystery of the missing plane continued to baffle aviation and security authorities who have so far not succeeded in tracking the aircraft despite deploying hi-tech radar and other gadgets.

PTI