Too early to say pings not from black box, says US Navy
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- Too early to say pings not from black box, says US Navy
The United States Navy has backed down from a theory posited earlier today that the four pings previously detected in the Indian Ocean had not been emitted by missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
In a statement quoted by The Guardian, the US Navy said that such comments were "premature" and gave its assurance that the US continued to work cooperatively with Australia in the search for the missing plane.
Previous comments were "speculative and premature", The Guardian reported the US Navy as saying, and the navy would "continue to work with our partners to more thoroughly understand the data acquired by the towed pinger locator. As such, we would defer to the Australians, as the lead in the search effort, to make additional information known at the appropriate time."
Earlier today, deputy director of ocean engineering Michael Dean had told CNN that the four acoustic transmissions which played a key role in shaping the search for MH370 were no longer believed to have come from the plane's black box.
Dean said that if the pings had come from the plane's recorders, searchers would have found them, adding that the transmissions had likely been "some sound produced by the ship... or within the electronics of the towed pinger locator".
Although Dean cautioned that it was not possible to absolutely exclude the theory that the pings had come from the flight's black boxes, CNN reported him saying there was no evidence now to suggest that they had.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot had previously said he was "very confident" the pings had come from the plane.
British satellite company Inmarsat has also defended the accuracy of its data, saying that it had been checked by other parties as well.
Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre has been contacted for comment.
Flight MH370 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished on March 8. Although authorities have not ruled out mechanical failure, they said that the loss of communication suggests the plane was deliberately diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. – May 29, 2014.
