Confusion on MH370 after conflicting reports on black boxes from Tony Abbott and Angus Houston

TONY Abbott said one thing about MH370. Angus Houston seemed to say another. Everyone was confused. This is what happened.

WHAT on Earth was going on?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced his Government was “very confident” that missing flight MH370’s black box recorder had been located.

But his statement seemed to be at odds with a statement released just minutes afterwards by the head of the MH370 search team, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston.

News_Image_File: Angus Houston, the man in charge of the MH370 search. Picture: Theo Fakos

Mr Houston’s statement, released by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, said signals detected by a RAAF AP-3c Orion aircraft were “not related” to a black box.

Mass confusion ensued as many thought Mr Houston was contradicting the Prime Minister.

It was made worse when a spokeswoman for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is running the search, confirmed Mr Houston’s remarks that there had been “no major breakthrough”.

News_Image_File: Mr Abbott tweeted this picture of himself yesterday, taking a call on MH370 developments. Picture: @TonyAbbottMHR

But it turns out Mr Abbott was this afternoon referring to separate signals detected by search teams on Saturday and Tuesday, while Mr Houston was ruling out signals detected on Thursday.

“We have very much narrowed down the search area ... we have now had a series of detections, some for quite a long period of time,” Mr Abbott said.

“It’s now getting to the stage that the signal from what we are very confident is from the black box is starting to fade.”

Government sources told news.com.au they were confident the Prime Minister’s remarks were factual.

It is understood search teams will not announce the discovery of the black box until the flight recorder has been sighted.

Mr Abbott is also due to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state dinner in Beijing tonight. He said that he would hold back on announcing more information until he had briefed the president, out of respect for the many Chinese families who had relatives on board the flight.