US Navy reveals acoustic pings did not come from MH 370's black boxes

A US Navy official has reportedly revealed that the four acoustic pings centered at the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes.

The report was revealed on Wednesday as searchers completed the first phase of their effort to search the missing plane by scanning 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the plane.

According to CNN, the Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering Michael Dean said that almost all authorities universally are of the opinion that the pings did not come from the onboard data or cockpit voice recorders but instead it come from some other man-made source unrelated to the jetliner that disappeared on March 8.

Dean said that if the pings had come from the recorders, searchers would have found them, adding that other countries involved in the search had reached the same conclusions.

Dean also said that their best theory currently is that the pings were likely some sound produced by the ship or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator, which was used by searchers to listen for underwater signals.

Dean added that it is not possible completely to exclude that the pings came from the black boxes, but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.

However, US Navy spokesman Christopher Johnston called Dean's statement as 'speculative and premature', saying that he is not saying that Dean's word's were inaccurate, but what they are saying is that it is not his place to say it.