SYDNEY, April 09. /ITAR-TASS/. The teams searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 have registered new signals in the Indian Ocean, allegedly coming from the black box of the missing MH370 flight, Australian media reported.
The signals were first reported last week 2,200 km west off the Australian coast by the Chinese ship Haixun 01, and by the Australian vessel Ocean Shield. Consequently, the search area has been narrowed from 234,000 sq km to 75,400 sq km.
Former defense chief Angus Houston, who now heads the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) , said the search teams registered two signals, the first time for five minutes, and the second time for around seven minutes.
“I believe we are searching the right area,” Houston said. “But we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final place of MH370,” he added.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 7. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. The connection with the plane was lost nearly two hours after it had taken off. On March 24, the airline made a statement announcing that all people on board the missing plane had died.
Twenty six countries are involved in the search operation, which will be the costliest in history, experts say. More than $44 million has already been spent on the search, and the expenses may rise to stand at several hundred million dollars in the nearest future.