Australian Prime Minister: Location of Black Box ‘Narrowed Down’

PM Tony Abbott speaking on Thursday

Australian authorities believe they have found the location of the black boxes from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in what appears to be a major breakthrough in what has quickly become one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

In China, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters at a press conference that authorities believe that the signals currently being detected are from the black box from Flight 370.

The prime minister said that a “series of detections” from the pinger locator that the Ocean Shield has been towing allowed investigators to narrow down the search area but cautioned they were still racing against the clock before the batteries powering the emergency beacons from the black box would expire.

“We’re very confident the signals we’re detecting are from the black box from MH370,” he said.

The prime minister said he was holding off on announcing more information until he had the chance to brief Chinese President Xi Jinxing on the news, out of respect for the families of the more than 150 Chinese passengers who were aboard Flight 370.

A few hours earlier, a tweet from an Australian journalist indicating that the black box “may have been found” and that the prime minister would make an announcement at 1:45 p.m. AEST turned out to be unfounded.  A spokesman for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is coordinating the search effort, said that there was no additional news.

“There’s no further update at this stage,” she said. “There’s nothing to report.”

(Photo: Accura Media Group)