国际英语新闻:U.S. Navy continues search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane

WASHINGTON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Navy personnel continued their support of the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a spokesman of U.S. Defense Department said on Monday.

The United States has two P-8 Orion aircraft searching in the Indian Ocean, Steve Warren said in a Pentagon news release.

Navy aircraft supporting the search have flown 24 missions, with 220 hours of flight time covering 336,000 square nautical miles, he said.

"Additionally, we have two pieces of highly sophisticated underwater detection equipment engaged in the search -- the towed pinger locator and the Bluefin-21 sidescan sonar," Warren said.

Both underwater devices are operating from the Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield, according to the latest news release from the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet.

The team operating the towed pinger locator detected signals Sunday that are consistent with sounds that would come from a black box, the release said.

The signals were detected on at least three separate occasions for extended periods of time and at several different depths.

The locator also detected two signals at the same frequency, but in different locations, which would be consistent with signals transmitted by both a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, the release noted.

The team is working to reacquire the signal and plans to use the Bluefin-21 to create a picture of any potential wreckage, the release said.

The search is a round-the-clock operation, and is currently focused on an area about 950 nautical miles northwest of Perth, Australia, according to the Pentagon spokesman.

Determining the location and position of search assets is "a very collaborative effort between Americans, the Australians, the Malaysians and others," Warren said. But, he added, "the Australians right now do have the lead."

The Malaysia Airlines flight bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur went missing on March 8 and more than 20 countries have gathered to work out its fate ever since. No definitive signs have been found so far.