French ship picks up signals presumed to be 'black boxes' of EgyptAir plane, officials say

L A Times ^ | 06/01/2016

[BenLurkin]

Laplace's equipment picked up the "signals from the seabed of the wreckage search area, assumed to be from one of the data recorders," the Egyptian statement read. It added that a second ship, the John Lethbridge, affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week.

Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders can be picked up from deep underwater. The Laplace is equipped with three detectors made by the Alseamar company designed to detect and localize signals from the flight recorders, which are believed to be at a depth of about 3,000 meters (9,842 feet). By comparison, the wreck of the RMS Titanic is lying at a depth of about 3,800 meters (12,500 feet).

Shaker Kelada, an EgyptAir official who has led other crash investigations for the carrier, told the AP that half "the job has been done now" and that the next step would be to determine the recorders’ exact location and extract them from the sea.

"We have to find where the boxes are exactly and decide on how to pull them out," he said, adding that search teams might need to send in robots or submarines and "be extremely careful ... to avoid any possible damage."

[rdl6989]

bookmarked for later

[Nifster]

Hope they find them. But if they don’t like the answers we still may not here them

[Mr. Jeeves]

How hard would it be to add automatic flotation devices to black boxes?

[KC_for_Freedom]

Hard, as they are bolted to airplane structure.

Could a data storage device be designed to explosively be released and float to the surface? Yes. But so could a transmitter that would continuously update a satellite with data in flight. Why these are not in the works is not known.

[BatGuano]

One might as well add automatic flotation devices to the entire aircraft.

The idea is to have the recording devices stay with the aircraft, not to allow them to float away.
The flight data recorders of today are extremely sophisticated and measure a huge range of information to be used in not only accident investigation but in monitoring airplane systems and human action with different controls.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Impossible. They are located deep within the aircraft, usually the tail.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Impossible. They are located deep within the aircraft, usually the tail. Even if they broke free, there is no guarantee that the rest of the sunken aircraft wouldn’t hold it down.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin.

The EgyptAir Black Boxes Have Been Detected. But Black Boxes Are Really Outdated
http://time.com/4354099/egyptair-flight-804-black-boxes/

> The news that a French Navy vessel has probably found the black boxes from EgyptAir Flight 804 brought huge relief Wednesday to Egyptian and French officials, who have led a frantic search for devices seen as crucial in determining whether a terrorist attack brought down the plane on its way from Paris to Cairo last month... has prompted another reaction: renewed calls to update the way airplanes gather and transmit information, and move past an aging black-box system that was introduced in the 1960s — decades before real-time data streaming became a ubiquitous part of life.