Retired Australian Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston speaks to the media during a press conference about the ongoing search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in Perth, Australia, Sunday, April 6, 2014. Houston, the head of the multinational search for the missing Malaysia airlines jet, confirmed that a Chinese ship had picked up electronic pulsing signals twice in a small patch of the search zone, once on Friday and again on Saturday, but he stressed the signals had not been verified as linked to the missing plane.PERTH, Australia - An Australian official overseeing the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane says underwater sounds picked up by equipment on an Australian navy ship are consistent with transmissions from black box recorders on a plane.
Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean, calls it "very encouraging." But he said Monday that it may take days to confirm whether signals picked up by the ship Ocean Shield are indeed from the flight recorders on Flight 370.
He says the position of the noise needs to be further refined, and then an underwater autonomous vehicle can be sent in to investigate.
The plane vanished March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.