Flight MH370: No new signals

A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion from 92 Wing, conducts a low level fly by before dropping stores to HMAS Toowoomba. Photo / AP

No new acoustic signals have been detected in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Hopes of recovering the aircraft's black box rose significantly in the past week after Australian vessel Ocean Shield detected four signals believed to have come from MH370's all-important flight recorder.

However, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said this morning that no new signals had been detected in the past 24 hours.

Nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships will continue the hunt for MH370 on Saturday, visually searching an area measuring 41,393 square kilometres about 2,300km northwest of Perth, the JACC said.

The size of the search area again appears to contradict Prime Minister Tony Abbott's recent suggestion that the search area in the Indian Ocean had narrowed.

Mr Abbott is in China on a trade mission and his host nation is eager for good news regarding MH370, with 153 of its citizens on board the ill-fated flight, which has been missing since March 8.

"We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres,'' Mr Abbott told business leaders in Shanghai on Friday.

Mr Abbott also briefed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday and told him the search area had been narrowed down to some kilometres after receiving "strong detections" from what authorities believe is the plane's black box.

Ocean Shield will continue using a "towed pinger locator" device on Saturday to try to detect more acoustic signals.

That work is in conjunction with AP-3C Orion aircraft and the British warship HMS Echo.

"This work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the autonomous underwater vehicle is deployed," the JACC added.

Watch: MH370: Signals come from black box

• Read: Q&A: Officer leading US MH370 aerial search
• Read: Flight MH370: Fading pings lift hopes of finding black boxes