At the weekend Australian Navy ship Ocean Shield picked up two acoustic signals "consistent" with those emitted by a black box recorder.
Searchers were on the verge of sending an unmanned submarine to look for the wreckage today, but the man in charge of the search says another signal needs to be picked up before the search progresses.
"We need another transmission to better refine the area, then we need to go down, have a look and find confirming evidence that that's where the aircraft is," retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.
With the search for the ill-fated flight in its 32nd day, the international search team is focusing on a 600-kilometre arc in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,600km off the West Australian coast.
But the area is still too large to launch a small submersible to scan the ocean floor.
"We will not deploy the submersibles ... unless we get another transmission, in which case we will probably have a better idea of what's down there and we will go down and have a look," Air Chief Marshal Houston said.
On Monday, Air Chief Marshal Houston confirmeda pinger locator deployed by the Ocean Shield vessel had detected two sets of signals - the first lasting two hours and 20 minutes, and the second 13 minutes.
08/04/14 ABC News
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Searchers were on the verge of sending an unmanned submarine to look for the wreckage today, but the man in charge of the search says another signal needs to be picked up before the search progresses.
"We need another transmission to better refine the area, then we need to go down, have a look and find confirming evidence that that's where the aircraft is," retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.
With the search for the ill-fated flight in its 32nd day, the international search team is focusing on a 600-kilometre arc in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,600km off the West Australian coast.
But the area is still too large to launch a small submersible to scan the ocean floor.
"We will not deploy the submersibles ... unless we get another transmission, in which case we will probably have a better idea of what's down there and we will go down and have a look," Air Chief Marshal Houston said.
On Monday, Air Chief Marshal Houston confirmeda pinger locator deployed by the Ocean Shield vessel had detected two sets of signals - the first lasting two hours and 20 minutes, and the second 13 minutes.
08/04/14 ABC News
