I've heard that a ship would need to be within 1-2 surface miles of the black box. That's not very big considering we have such little information about where it might have gone down.

Parts of the Indian Ocean are where the US drops satellites so as they can never be recovered.


Just saying.

It sounds like the beacon could be detectable from a mile or two. So the search are could be much larger, tens of miles wide. If they have indeed found some wreckage and the beacon is transmitting they will almost surely find it.

I know nothing about shipping containers but the biggest one I could find was 53 feet which is around 16 meters, the debris is 79 feet(24 meters) So there's a decent chance the object is not a shipping container, unless someone can fine one that is around 24m. Doesn't mean it's part of a plane though.

From what I've read it was US sources that gave the location in the Indian Ocean and the search area is in the area that the plane would have run out of fuel. Also whatever it is, appears to be bobbing up and down in the water.

The Air France disaster BB's were found at 12,500 to 13,100 ft 2 years after the plane disappeared and they were able to recover all the information so even if the boxes aren't found anytime soon there's still a chance they can eventually be found and the info recovered.

They didn't find it with AF 447 where they had a smaller area to search.

Edit: And best case scenario, the debris actually is from this flight, still involves a search area with thousands of square miles due to drifting currents and the length of time since the crash. If the debris isn't from this flight, the search area is significantly larger.

Definitely.

Anyway, I feel like I'm just repeating myself. I've explained why I still believe there's a good chance the black boxes won't be recovered but if people feel differently that's fine.

Apparently they're going to drop beacons into the water around the search area to trace currents.

Haha. WP.

haven't they already arrived at the area of the satellite images and there's nothing there??

here is a list of all unrecovered flight recorders. since 1988 there have been three flights resulting in fatalities where neither flight recorder was found, two were the 9/11 planes and the third was a siberian plane shot down by a russian missile.

flight recorders from normal crashes just don't stay lost. it's misinformation spread by the media to give a fake sweat. where there's the will and the $$ there's a way. as soon as a government gives in and pays top dollar for a legitimate search they get found. the pinger sweat is an 8 figure sweat for the governments concerned to find them on the cheap, but there has never been a case where the flight recorders were desperately wanted and never found.

If they can find the wreckage they can find the boxes. That's how they found the Air France ones. If the debris is from the plane then the wreckage is nearby and I know they found the Air France wreckage by sending downautonomous underwater vehicles(AUV's) that comb the ocean floor with sonar.

Satellite images were taken about 4 days ago. Given the currents and other variables, they've still got a search area that's hundreds, if not thousands of square miles to find something that's 24m long.

why does the black box only store two hours of voice recording? memory today is cheap and small, so it should be easy to store enough audio to cover even the longest flights.

does the black box have to use a special type of memory for durability (e.g., no SSDs?). or are black boxes locked into somewhat dated technologies because everything has to be standardized?

How did they not find the 9/11 ones given that they knew exactly where the planes hit? (non-conspiratard answers only please)

Currents being what they are, I think that the object in one of the photos was pretty clearly Osama bin laden.

I think most of the resistance to things like this and to automatically sending the data from the plane (so you wouldn't even need to retrieve the black boxes in most cases) is from the pilots.

They have understandable concerns but it feels like you could come up with a system that addresses their concerns and protects their privacy thats much better than what we have now.

because they were incinerated and then crushed beneath two buildings?

I would have thought that as they're designed to survive an air crash, they are capable of withstanding huge forces. Was the impact just too much in that case?

They're certainly not designed to be exposed to intense fire for a prolonged amount of time. No analog or digital storage device is.

Apparently it's going to take 3 days to be sure. The aerial searches have been canceled for the day due to limited visibility. I think the Norwegian vessel has only just arrived there recently. Plus the planes can only search for a limited time before they have to turn back for fuel. It takes 4 hours just to get there. I'm assuming once the warships get there they'll have helicopters or planes they can launch.

Also with the black boxes only recording 2 hours, maybe investigators are only interested with the last 2 hours before an accident, I'm not sure though.

With regard to culpability, MSNBC is reporting that it is all George W. Bush's Fault and that you're a racist

asking for a "non-conspiritard" answer means you don't want to hear the truth.