The hunt for the missing Malaysian jet was today narrowed down drastically to a targeted patch in the Indian Ocean after fresh underwater signals possibly from the plane’s black box were picked up this week.
Today’s search zone was the smallest in the month-long hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The search area narrowed down to 57,923 sq km from yesterday’s 75,000 sq km. The centre of the search area lies approximately 2280 kilometres north west of Perth.
Up to 10 military aircraft, four civil aircraft and 13 ships were searching for missing plane in the narrowed search zone. Australian ship Ocean Shield towing a pinger locater in the southern Indian Ocean on Tuesday reacquired two signals after earlier detecting two on Saturday.
In another major development yesterday, Australian authorities analysed the signals picked up on Saturday and determined that they were not natural occurrences, but likely came from specific electronic equipment.
Finding the black box is crucial for knowing what happened on March 8 when the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight MH370 with 239 people, including five Indians, disappeared under mysterious circumstances.