A Chinese patrol ship looking for signs of Malaysia Airlines MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean has recorded a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom, said that was the standard beacon frequency for both black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.
‘‘They’re identical,’’ he said.
A black box detector deployed from the ship Haixun 01 picked up the signal but it hasn’t been established whether it is related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the agency said.
The signal, which experts say has the same frequency as flight recorders, was reportedly detected at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.
It has been 30 days since the aircraft vanished and there are fears the beacon on the plane’s black boxes might run out of power and stop sending signals.
Although black box beacons have a battery life of about 30 days, they have been known to continue emitting signals for months longer.
The underwater component of the international search mission has only just begun.
The pinger locator can detect a box’s signals, but only from 1.6 kilometres away. The search for wreckage is in 217,000 square kilometres of ocean north-west of Perth.
