Posted on 03/25/2014 8:43:24 PM PDT by Praxeologue
Recovering the black boxes from the Malaysia Airlines jet that crashed into the southern Indian Ocean is a Herculean task, even with the wealth of sophisticated equipment being deployed.
Any hope of finding survivors from the missing plane was extinguished yesterday when Malaysia's prime minister announced satellite data showed MH370's journey had “ended in the southern Indian Ocean” off the west coast of Australia.
Seventeen days after the Boeing 777 disappeared, distraught relatives were forced to accept what they had long feared ― that the 239 passengers and crew on board were never coming home.
The plane's two black boxes are key to solving the mystery of why the plane veered so far off course and its final fate, but experts say that the search for them will be long and difficult.
In theory, the black boxes containing flight data and cockpit voice recordings will continue emitting tracking signals for about another two weeks, with an average audible range of two to three kilometres (nearly two miles).
But with no debris in the remote search area confirmed as linked to the plane, it is still a case of looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Picking up a signal from the beacon seems an outside chance,” said a member of the team that hunted the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.
Vast search zone
The investigator, who asked to remain anonymous, noted that in the Air France case the signals were not heard at all. One transmitter had failed and the other had fallen off on impact and was never found, he said.
“So I'm fairly pessimistic about this approach,” he said, recommending that the immediate priority should be to catalogue every piece of debris that is discovered.
“Then, ideally, data buoys should be deployed,” he said. These instruments, commonly used for meteorological data, are tracked by satellite and give an idea of ocean currents in the area to help confirm mathematical models.
But he warned that the 17 days that have elapsed since the crash and the “uncertainty associated with these models will combine to make the search zone quite vast”.
Commercial airliners are obliged to carry two black boxes ― the Digital Flight Data Recorder which logs the speed, altitude and direction, while the Cockpit Voice Recorder keeps track of cockpit conversations and other sounds and announcements.
Even before the official announcement that the plane had crashed, the US navy said it was flying a black box locator to Perth. The Pinger Locator, weighing 35 kilogrammes (80 pounds), is attached to a cable and towed by a ship.
It is equipped with a listening device that can detect the signals of a black box at a depth of up to 6,000 metres (20,000 feet).
Scouring the sea floor
If a signal is not picked up, the next stage would be to deploy lateral scanning sonars after determining the variations of the sea floor to pick up any anomalies.
All the experts who spoke to AFP believed the search operation could last a very long time ― months or more.
In the Air France crash it took 23 months to locate the main wreckage and retrieve the black boxes at a depth of 3,900 metres.
“An underwater phase to try to locate the plane from flight MH370 can only be started if the activity under way allows us to define a search zone more limited than the current search zone,” France's air accident investigation bureau (BEA) said yesterday.
Once such a zone is set, if it is over a flat and sedimentary seabed, investigators can use “towed sonars and get a good coverage”.
If, however, the zone is over a broken, irregular seabed, they could call in the Remus submarine drones used for the Air France search plane.
Remote operating vehicles (ROVs) could also be used in a later stage to check topographical anomalies with high-definition cameras.
“These remote-controlled robots, which have a cable linking them to the surface, move forward slowly and thus have a more reliable coverage,” said the investigator, who was formerly with the BEA.
“But there as well, a very precise position is needed to use them at depth.”
And even if the black boxes are found, there are no guarantees they will be in a state to give up their data.
The Malaysian authorities have said a deliberate act made MH370 disappear from civilian air control radars ― and the big question is whether the Cockpit Voice Recorder was immobilised.
“You only need to pull the breaker that is by the pilot's seat and it is taken off-line electrically,” explained one aviation expert.
MH370's disappearance has prompted a major debate over inflight communications, including the benefits of live streaming black box data.
Is that a fact up to this point?
No, not a fact, but likely. Ping analysis from Inmarsat based on the Dopler effect indicates, according to Inmasat, that the plane crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
I guess whoever at airliners.net said that the flight data recorder was on a two and a half hour loop was wrong. Your info is that the FDR has a complete record. That’s better than I thought.
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I thought the three extra fuel tanks in the aft cargo bay were for the 777-200LR models only, not the ER models.
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It's frightening when it's close to the truth.
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If and when they find some wreckage where they are looking I will believe that the plane went down in that location. Until then I feel that this plane most likely ended up where you suggested amongst some towel headed camel drivers.
MH370: Families Called to Urgent Meeting; Malaysia Press Conference 10 a.m. EDT 3/24/14
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136667/posts
MALAYSIAN AUTHORITIES: The Plane Crashed With No Survivors
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136697/posts
Malaysia Grand Prix pushes grieving families of jet passengers from hotel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136731/posts
Officials Say Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane “Ended in the Southern Indian Ocean”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136711/posts
WORLD NEWS Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Ended in Indian Ocean, Prime Minister Says
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136787/posts
How British satellite company Inmarsat tracked down MH370
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136789/posts
Aussie Flight Disaster Film ‘Deep Water’ Shelved Over Eerie Resemblance to Missing Malaysia Flight
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3136793/posts
Malaysia Airlines crash: Suicide mission theory of MH370 investigators
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3136904/posts
Flight 370: Storm of emotions over lives “lost” as storm at sea delays search
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3137006/posts
How a UK firm ... used a nineteenth century mathematical model to track missing flight MH370
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3137015/posts
Why locating MH370 in the Southern Ocean is so difficult
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3137062/posts
Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane: What We Know Now
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3137157/posts
What gets me is why are the intelligence communities so silent about the whereabouts of the passengers on land?
Are they hoping to get bigger fish, the actual nuke devices or to make a clean insertion and extraction?
If anything I would rather listen to a concocted story by Israel that they know where the jet is and are launching forces to destroy in before it attempts to destroy Israel.
I think that they just spun a beer bottle and where it stopped is where they think it went, too controversial this new procedure, never been fully tested, and if they are wrong their stock will tank. Did they just get a major new contract or “bribe”?
Or better yet, if the state news agency, CNN, can tell us it slipped into a black hole, why can’t it simply slip back through, minus the people and the black boxes, of course?
It took 23 months correct, but remember, they had radar and transponder readings until it went in, and they just happened to have all sorts of floating debris they found within a couple of days, like the tail section.
To date, they have not found a thing after almost two weeks of searching for the debris in the large area where they ASSUME it went down. Two sat images days apart counter to the currents is all they are going on and even with that known location and accounting for known currents they still couldn’t find it with the best sub/ocean hunting aircraft in the world, the P-3 Orion and the P-8 Poseidon.
LOL — and so true
But we may find out what quietly smoking a cigar in the cabin for five hours sounds like.
They could pull up the plane out of the waters there at this point and there would still be those denying that that's the plane and insisting that it's really parked in a mullah's driveway in Pakistan.
True. Plus, the area they have identified is merely an educated guess and an aircraft engine fire suppression globe washes up two thousand miles from the search area.
The media seems to want to minimize the scope of the task.
” Why would the U.S. not have announced it if it had detected a water crash?”
Because it landed at Diego Garcia.
The U.S. has had plenty of time to plant evidence off Australia, so even if they find something, it won’t be credible.
Then why was there no gear-down engine ping? Why would the pilot or hijacker land at at U.K./U.S. airbase?
French satellite spots 122 objects up to 75ft long in Indian Ocean that appear to be debris from doomed airliner
122 objects is a lot of debris —
Has Israel joined in the search efforts? Do they not have superior intelligence gathering systems?
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