A US navy ship has detected signals believed to be coming from the flight recorder of an Indonesian plane that went missing with 102 people aboard on New Year's day, the US embassy in Jakarta said on Friday.
Wreckage from the missing Adam Air Boeing 737-400 started turning up in waters on the west coast of Sulawesi over recent weeks, but crash investigators want to find the black box and main body of the plane to determine the fate of the doomed plane.
The USNS Mary Sears, an oceanographic survey ship with specialised equipment, had been helping search the waters in the area.
"During the search of the projected crash site of Adam Air Flight 574, the Mary Sears, using a Towed Pinger Locator, detected pingers on the same frequency of the black box associated with the missing airplane," the US embassy said in a statement.
After sweeping the ocean floor around the area, the ship found heavy debris scattered over a wide area and was analysing the data, it said.
The embassy said the information had been passed onto Indonesian authorities and the ship would leave the area on Saturday.
However, the chief of Indonesia's transport safety board told Reuters he has not yet received such a report.
The Indonesian head of the search mission said earlier this month that the search for the plane's main body and black box was being hampered by the depth of the sea in areas where metal objects had been detected in the Makassar Strait.
A flight recorder can give off signals for 30 days to aid detection, but this one may be lying in waters as deep as 1,700 metres in the area.
The 17-year-old plane was heading from Surabaya in East Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi when it vanished in bad weather. The plane made no distress call, although the pilot had reported concerns over crosswinds.
A flight data recorder.
The United States military may have found the Black Boxes from a missing Indonesian jetliner that went missing on January 1, 2007.

Using ultrasonic pinger signals, the USNS Mary Sears located debris on the bottom of the ocean that match the signal that they are using to find the boxes. 

"We have detected heavy debris scattered over a wide area," said the U.S. embassy in Indonesia in a statement. Other debris may also have been located at least 1,000 meters below the oceans surface.

"During the search of the projected crash site of Adam Air Flight 574, the Mary Sears, using a Towed Pinger Locator, detected pingers on the same frequency of the black box associated with the missing airplane," added the statement.

Despite the announcement, Indonesia's transport safety board denies receiving any reports that the boxes have been found.

"One thing is for sure, up until this second, I have not received any report from the (Indonesian) liaison officers who were onboard the ship," said Indonesian air force commander who is in charge of the ongoing search to find the plane, Eddy Suyanto.

The largest piece of the plane to be recovered so far, is the tail of the plane, which was discovered by a fisherman. Trays and seats have also been recovered, but so far none of the bodies of the passengers or crew have been found.

The plane, a Adam Air Boeing 737-400 went missing, in flight from Surabaya, on the island of Java, to Manado on the island Sulawesi. All 102 people on board the plane are believed to have been killed.

Just 1 day after the plane crashed, false reports that the wreckage was found on land and 12 survivors were found had began to circulate. The 12 people that were reported to have been survivors, turned out to be the remaining survivors of a ferry crash in the same area 4 days before the plane was reported missing.

The cause of the crash is still not known, and investigations are ongoing.