Authorities Cast Doubt on Signal in Jet Search

The Australian authorities searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane said Friday that the latest potential signal was probably not from the flight recorders, despite hopes raised the previous day. A sensor dropped into the sea by a Royal Australian Air Force plane had detected an acoustic signal in the same area of the ocean where a search vessel had earlier detected signals that might have come from flight recorders of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the Australian search authorities said Thursday. The latest potential clue to the whereabouts of the aircraft came in the same seas off Western Australia where the Ocean Shield, an Australian ship, had already collected four sets of signals — two on Saturday, two on Tuesday — that could have come from beacons attached to the plane’s two flight recorders. Yet Angus Houston, the retired air chief marshal overseeing the search in the southern Indian Ocean, said in an emailed statement on Friday that “an initial assessment of the possible signal detected by a R.A.A.F. AP-3C Orion aircraft yesterday afternoon has been determined as not related to an aircraft underwater locator beacon.” He discounted expectations of an impending announcement on the recorders, which are crucial to determining what caused the plane to disappear on March 8. “On the information I have available to me, there has been no major breakthrough in the search,” Mr. Houston said. The Ocean Shield, he added, would continue seeking to "locate further signals that may be related to the aircraft’s black boxes.” “It is vital to glean as much information as possible while the batteries on the underwater locator beacons may still be active,” he said.