'Contact lost' with Malaysia Airlines plane

I don't think all the ships that were out there initially had the equipment to do this kind of search, also they did't know for sure the area was correct, so the last thing you want to do is send a rare bit of equipment to the wrong location, only to need it somewhere else at short notice.
This sort of situation is unprecedented really, so it was always going to be an uphill struggle if no wreckage was found.
 
Redgie said:
Are they not starting this towed pinger thing a bit late? Surely the battery on the black box will be dead in a matter of days?

I realise they only recently narrowed the search area down, but couldn't they have had the things in the water from the moment the ships arrived?
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When towing it only goes about 5 knots so it's not going to cover much ground regardless. It likely won't find anything unless they have some non-disclosed way of narrowing the search area.
 
Haggisman said:
I take it we can expect an increase in the cost of portable electronics such as mobiles etc. due to this? Or are they usually stuck on a boat?
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The regulations currently being proposed only apply to passenger aircraft.

Malt_Vinegar said:
But also a lot of cargo would be damaged, not to mention any live cargo dying...
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Some tat being damaged is preferable to hundreds dying in a fire though.
 
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Energize said:
The regulations currently being proposed only apply to passenger aircraft.



Some tat being damaged is preferable to hundreds dying in a fire though.
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You can't have unpressurized cargo bays without completely redesigning todays passanger aircraft. All there is between you and the cargo bay is a fibre glass floor panel about 1cm thick. You would have to add a completely new floor structure in and seal it which would add a huge amount of weight and design problems.
 
A pressurised circular tube is far easier to design and manufacture than a semicircular one, it would need loads of supporting ribs to distribute the load forces and stop it breaking in the corners.
 
Morfik said:
When towing it only goes about 5 knots so it's not going to cover much ground regardless. It likely won't find anything unless they have some non-disclosed way of narrowing the search area.
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Which they might have. There's a USA military base in the area and it has major surveillance facilities. Details are secret, but the existence of the base and that it's a major surveillance outpost are not secret. They may well have detected something relevant and if they have they'd probably keep it as secret as possible.
 
Arbitrary selection of land mass to determine scale of search. That or we can all holiday in the Indian Ocean for less than £50! :)
 
Glad it was the Chinese to be honest, if the US underwater search team had found it so soon after just turning up I dont think Baco could have kept up with demand for tinfoil!
 
Maybe getting somewhere. If so the prize goes to the Chinese.

A Chinese patrol ship looking for signs of Malaysia Airlines MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean has recorded a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom, said that was the standard beacon frequency for both black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

‘‘They’re identical,’’ he said.

A black box detector deployed from the ship Haixun 01 picked up the signal but it hasn’t been established whether it is related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the agency said.

The signal, which experts say has the same frequency as flight recorders, was reportedly detected at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.
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http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing...s-up-pulse-signal-reports-20140405-zqrbc.html
 
Does seem a bit, easy that a boat has picked it up so quickly. I haven't followed to closely though, if they've really done some seriously intelligent work narrowing down the area then it's perfectly possible.

What's the deal with retrieving something at serious depths, I have no idea how they go about doing it now.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Does seem a bit, easy that a boat has picked it up so quickly. I haven't followed to closely though, if they've really done some seriously intelligent work narrowing down the area then it's perfectly possible.

What's the deal with retrieving something at serious depths, I have no idea how they go about doing it now.
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Good question.

I'm not even sure of the location of the flight recorder in the plane.:o Is it in the cockpit?
 
ThundyCat said:
Good question.

I'm not even sure of the location of the flight recorder in the plane.:o Is it in the cockpit?
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It's in the tail section. I think for the Air France salvage operation they got the CVR and FDR using an unmanned submersible operated remotely. Winter is coming in the southern hemisphere, I wonder how that will affect the effort.

Assuming it is MH370...
 
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