Electronic pings used to narrow the search area for MH370 didn’t actually come from the missing plane’s black boxes, an official says.
A visitor looks out at Malaysia Airlines aircraft at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport Tuesday.
AP Photo/Vincent Thian
The months-long search for a missing Malaysian Airlines plane suffered a setback Wednesday when an official revealed the acoustic pings they had picked up probably didn't come from the plane after all.
The series of pings were detected in April and seemed to come from the black boxes of the missing Boeing 777. That led searchers to comb an area of the southern Indian Ocean, west of Australia.
But by Wednesday — after a search of 329 square miles wrapped up — U.S. Navy officials said the pings could actually have come from the search ship or other equipment that was towed in the water, according to CNN. Officials explained that if the pings had come from the plane they would have found it by now.
A map shows the possible path of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Handout / Reuters
The revelation that the pings didn't come from the plane comes just one day after the Malaysian government released 45 pages of raw satellite data on the plane's flight path. It also means that searchers have a significantly larger area to comb through; for the next phase, Australia will hire private companies to look at 23,166 square miles of ocean floor, CNN reports.
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