two sequences of clicks. if you have search crews and they can find the signal again, is it just about following where the signal gets stronger? is this a straight line process. i don t think it s that simple. it s like a game of marco polo. you re going to have to listen for the sond, make another pass and try to get closer until you get on top of it and then you can do some visual surveillance, map the floor and try to locate these things for real. and i think it probably strikes a lot of people that no one is really jumping to the conclusion that hey, this is the black box from the plane. we haven t drawn that connection yet. obviously it s promising. is there a situation where the signal could turn out to be false and if so is there a source that could be making this signal? these are very unique simple devices designed to emit this type of frequency and pulse
would expect from two pingers, one each on the flight data as well as the cockpit voice recorders. what i would like to do before i say with certainty that it is the aircraft is one reacquire the signal. two, deploy the autonomous underwater unit and then switch out the sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage. we need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft. back in malaysia, authorities confirm that flight 370 was never picked up by radar in neighboring indonesia. a source inside tells cnn the plane purposefully flew around indonesian air space. this is the only sound people want to hear. the so called pings.
t reporter: the language is more, like you said, much les confident. mark matthews is the guy whose team is actually operating this towed pinger locator. he s going to explain how it works and what else needs to ham. what i would like to say before i say with absolute certainty that it is the aircraft, one reacquire the three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of the what would be the wreckage. but certainly, you know, we re jumping to conclusions here, we need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft. right now, it really is a race against time. i mean every time the ocean shield makes a pass, that takes eight hours, then you think about if they do locate this signal, just getting this underwater drone down there, it takes two hours to get down to
reporter: matthew s team is on the ocean shield using a towed pinger locator or tpl, listening for flight 370 s black boxes. what i would like to do before i absolutely say with certainty that it is the aircraft, is one reacquire the signal, two deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle with the side scan sonar, and three, switch out that sonar with the camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage. slow and tedious work, nearly 15,000 feet, almost three miles down. the extreme depth pushing the limits of the underwater drone. certainly we re jumping to conclusions here, we need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft. reporter: their biggest obstacle, time. the black box batteries are
search crews are working around the clock trying to find the source of two mysterious pings. the question is are they from the missing plane. these signals are on the same unique frequency as pings emitted from black box recorders and both are unique which is what we would expect. one on the flight data recorder and the other from the cockpit voice recorder. what i would like to do before i say with certainty that it is the aircraft is one reacquire the signal. two deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle to map the debris field and three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit to take photographs. but certainly we re jumping to conclusions here. we need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft. it is day 31 since the plane