Official says ship detects possible transmission

PERTH, Australia (AP) — 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.