Navy Official: Pings Likely Weren't From Flight 370

A senior US Navy official has said four pings detected in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 probably didn't come from the jet's black boxes. Speaking with CNN, Michael Dean said countries involved in the search concluded that had the pings come from the jet, searchers would have found a sign of the plane when scanning 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor around all four ping sites. With that search now complete, it "can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370," the Australian Joint Agency Coordination Center told the New York Times. Dean added the pings instead came from another man-made source unrelated to Flight 370, perhaps even the searching ship.

The next phase of the search will involve a far larger area: as much as 23,166 square miles off the coast of Western Australia. That search will likely begin in August "after commercial side-scan sonar operators are contracted," the Belfast Telegraph reports. "We won’t be searching the area where the acoustic pings were detected again," a rep for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau added. "We are confident that that search has been completed." (More Malaysia Airlines stories.)