about a month and the plane disappeared march 8th. today is april 5th. time is of the essence for those searching for malaysian flight 370. chinese news report say a chinese ship picked up a signal in the southern indian ocean. at 37.5 kilohertz. that s the same frequency emitted by the plane s black boxes or flight data recorders. malaysian authorities say they re trying to verify the report. the chinese also say one of their air force planes spotted some white floating objects in the search area. again, we do not know yet if the report of a ping or if these reports of the floating objects are true and if they re related to the missing malaysian 777 jet. military and civilian planes and ships from several nations, including china, australia, britain, and the u.s. are scouring parts of the indian ocean where the plane may have gone down. we re getting word from angus houston, the coordinator of the joint agency coordination
they heard. reporter: they re saying that the chinese ship deployed a black box detector into the water in the southern indian ocean and picked autopsy pulse signal, a ping. 37.5 killohertz. that s the same frequency emitted by the flight recorder. one of the air force planes spotted white floating objects in that search area. malaysian authorities say they re trying to verify this report. military and civilian planes and ships from several nations, including china, australia, britain and the u.s., are searching parts of the indian ocean where that plane may have gone down. arthel? there is a healthy dose of skepticism about this right now. correct? absolutely. first of all, because it came from chinese state-run media reports. instead of from the international coordinator of this search. air chief marshal. houston said today that he had been advised of the chinese
company that delivered the original flight data recorders. let s assume that the chinese ship actually did hear something, and you have told us that the black box pings happened at a unique frequency. are you confident these pings couldn t be confused for a different kind of sound like perhaps a military sonar or maybe even a fishing vessel? well, good question, and i think that s where the 37.5 killy herkil kilohertz verification, that it was that frequency, a critical. it was designed to be different from all the other ambient background noise in the ocean, so it should stand out just like they claim it did. and that sound anish comes from a beacon similar to this. we have a flight data recorder on our desk. this is a beacon or company may have manufactured whether it was for this 777 or others, should we be listening for two pingers,
ship. how long do you think that might take? it depends entirely on how further away. if the ships were in the southern section of the search area, it could take them 12 to 24 hours to get there. and in that time, the data could have stopped transmitting. you got to bear in mind, 37.5 kill ahertz, it s a fairly common pinger used in the ocean. so it s not unique. it could be a variety of things with the signal, i d really like to see, as i said earlier, we ve had a lot of red herrings, hype hyperbo hyperbowla on the whole search and it would be fantastic if this is it, but there are lots of other things that could be
now the families have heard it. if it is not true, the damage has already been done. listen. we will take a quick break here. if you are just joining us, just to let you know, we are getting information as you hear us talking about from the state news agency xinhua, who has a representative on board the chinese patrol ship, haixun 1 that the signal has been detected in the south indian ocean of 37.5 kilohertz which is the standard frequency of a beacon. this is coming from the one source. nothing has been confirmed. we decided to do some digging. we are talking next to the president of dukane seacom. he is telling us we need to be cautious about this information that is coming in. he will tell us why after the short break. stay close.