Malaysia plane MH370 : Pinger locator deployed in search

Malaysia plane MH370: Pinger locator deployed in search

Richard Westcott reports on the use of a pinger locator to find a black box
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MH370 mystery

10 questions
Black-box answers
What we know
Mourning the missing
The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 moved into a new phase on Friday with the deployment of a towed pinger locator to find the black box.

Two ships with locator capabilities are searching a 240km (150 mile) path in a bid to retrieve the data recorder.

But Australia's search chief said it was a race against time as the battery-powered signal fades after 30 days.

The plane disappeared on 8 March en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It was carrying 239 people.

It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, although no confirmed debris has been found from the plane.

The search is being co-ordinated from the city of Perth in Western Australia.

Fourteen aircraft and 11 ships were involved in Friday's search activities.

Ships sighted a number of objects in the area but none were associated with the missing plane, the coordination agency said.

'Highest probability'
Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agencies Coordination Centre (JACC) leading the search, said that two ships had "commenced the sub-surface search for emissions from [the] black box pinger".

Australia naval vessel Ocean Shield was using a towed pinger locator from the US Navy, while HMS Echo, which had similar capabilities, was also searching.

But the former military chief now coordinating the eight-nation search said it was "getting pretty close to the time when it might expire."

Beacons in the black box emit "pings" so they can be more easily found but the batteries only last for about a month.