Devices are best chance of getting answers
The box – two separate devices containing cockpit voice recordings and instrument data – offers the best chance of finding out why the Airbus jetliner vanished in an Atlantic storm en route to Paris with 228 people on board. The devices are designed to send homing signals whenthey hit water, but merely locating them presents one of the most daunting recovery tasks since the exploration of the Titanic and could take months, experts said.
“If you think how long it took to find the Titanic and that the debris would be smaller, you are looking for a needle in haystack. You... could spend months running sonars down to a deep depth.” said Derek Clarke, joint managing director of Aberdeen-based Divex, which builds diving equipment. Both recorders were recovered from 2,000 metres following a two-week search after the crash of Air India Flight 182, which was blown up off the Irish coast in 1985.
