He said the detections were "an important and encouraging lead," but he cautioned that they be treated "carefully" as they haven't been verified as being related to Flight 370. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) plans to search three separate areas Sunday about 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles) northwest of Perth. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Officials said there was "some hope" the locators would be able to find the black box 
 
 The head of the Australian agency co-ordinating the search said the reported signals "are consistent with the aircraft black box" but "there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft". On Saturday the Haixun 01 - one of two Chinese ships in the area - picked up the signal at about 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The signal "is the standard beacon frequency" for the plane's cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom. It is still not known why the plane diverted from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing four weeks ago with 239 people on board. The flight is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, although no confirmed debris has been found. Hide Caption 13 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A towed pinger locator is readied to be deployed off the deck of the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 7, 2014. There have been many apparently promising leads over the past few weeks that have looked like the search team closing in, only for those leads to turn into nothing. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. However there is no evidence so far that it is linked to MH370. The battery-powered signal fades after 30 days. The batteries on Flight 370's black boxes were due to be replaced in June, the Malaysia Airlines chief executive said Saturday.
– Could it be? A Chinese ship searching for Flight 370 has picked up a ping in the southern Indian Ocean, reports CNN and the BBC. Both cite a report in China's Xinhua news agency. The pulse is 37.5 kHz, the frequency for the Malaysian plane's black-box data recorders, says the president of the beacon's manufacturer. All the reports caution that it could turn out to be yet another false hope, however. "This could be a variety of things," says one oceanographer, noting that the frequency is used by lots of instruments. For the record, the Chinese ship detected the signal at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, says the state-run Xinhua. "It is yet to be established whether it is related to the missing jet," the report says. The development comes as dozens of ships and planes intensify their sweeps in the search zone, given the finite battery life of the data recorders.