Confusion on MH370 after conflicting reports on black boxes from Tony Abbott ...

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.

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'.

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.

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