Michael Dean, the US Navy’s director of ocean engineering, told CNN overnight that the acoustic noises which prompted a narrowing of the broad search patterns to a smaller, specific area of the southern Indian Ocean in early April instead came from “man-made sources”, most likely either the device used to locate the sounds or the search ships themselves.
The news, which means the massive search may have been concentrated in the wrong area, comes as yet another heart-breaking blow to the families of the 239 missing passengers, whose hopes of knowing what finally happened to their loved ones now seem even further away.
“Our best theory at this point is that [the sounds were] likely some sound produced by the ship … or [from] within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator,” Mr Dean said.
“Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound.”
Dean said other countries involved in the massive search for the jet, which disappeared on March 8, had also reached the same conclusion.
In early April, when the pings were first detected, the head of the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, retired Australia Defence Force Chief Angus Houston told a press conference that experts believed the signals were consistent with those emitted by a black box flight data recorder.
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