Search teams looking for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane have detected signals consistent with those from aircraft black boxes.
The BBC reports that Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield received two signals, once for more than two hours.
The find has been called the “most promising lead” so far by air chief marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the search.
However, he added: “We haven’t found the aircraft yet and we need further confirmation.”
He said the signals were found using a ‘towed pinger locator’.
“On this occasion two distinct pinger returns were audible. Significantly this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.”
The plane, carrying 239 people, was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 when it disappeared.
Once the position of the signal has been fixed to an area, the device can be lowered into the water to try to locate wreckage on the sea floor, Houston said.
“It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370,” he said. “In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.”
The race is on to find the plane before the batteries on the black box run out.