 The wreckage of missing Malaysian airliner may have been found on the seabed even deeper than the final resting place of the Titanic, according to reports today. Salvage teams hunting for the plane's black box devices have picked up signals from 14,764 feet below the surface of the southern Indian Ocean. So-called "pings" have been detected 1,650km off the coast of Perth, Australia, at a depth of 4,500m. When the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on 14th April 1912 it finally rested 12,500ft beneath the Atlantic ocean. The depth will pose difficulties for salvage teams using the latest state of the art technology to locate the black boxes. There is little wonder as to why the area in the southern Indian Ocean is called the "loneliest place on earth". One of the devices being used to try and fix the point of location of the two black boxes, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, is the Bluefin 21. The 21 foot long robotic underwater vehicle which has a depth limit of 14,763 ft (4,500M) meaning it will be pushed to the very limit of its capabilities. But the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could be nearing an end after 30 days of mystery and speculation since the plane vanished on March 8. Hope has been reignited after three "pings" - or signals - were picked up by the Australian vessel Ocean Shield. Retired Australian air chief marshal Angus Houston announced it was "the most promising lead and the best information we have had". The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder are being hunted by an armada of vessels carrying state of the art technology. Despite the possibility of the difficult search coming to an end, Malaysia's acting transport minister remains "cautiously hopeful". Hishammuddin Hussein led a press conference in Kuala Lumpur at 10:30am GMT where gave details about the detection of the signals. He said the first detection held for two hours and 20 minutes before the ship lost contact. After turning around, the ship picked up a second round of signals for around 13 minutes Mr Hussein said the signals emitted indicated the two black boxes had been located. In a surprising twist, the alleged new find is 340 miles from where a Chinese vessel claimed it picked up black box pings on Saturday. A restrained but clearly optimistic Mr Hussein said: "I'm cautiously hopeful there will be a positive development in the next few days if not hours." There has been no confirmed debris found in the southern Indian Ocean which is the focus of the search. Family members of the missing 239 passengers and crew are clinging to hope that their relatives may have somehow survived the crash. And Mr Hussein conceded "miracles do happen" but satellite data has not revealed any sign of life or lifeboats in the area. Mirror
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