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quagmire

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 19, 2004
6,910
2,338
At this point I think the only way we ever find something is if some wreckage is found washed up on a beach somewhere. I doubt the black boxes will be found if the pings weren't from them.

If they can locate the crash site, the black boxes will be found eventually. It took two years to locate AF447's black boxes because while they found debris, took them awhile to locate the main site where it settled on the ocean floor.

And considering we are not looking at a mid air breakup and it being some kind of deliberate action, find the wreckage, you'll find the BB's.
 

vrDrew

macrumors 65816
Jan 31, 2010
1,376
13,412
Midlife, Midwest
At this point I think the only way we ever find something is if some wreckage is found washed up on a beach somewhere.

If three months from now an identifiable piece of wreckage washed up on the shores of Peru or South Africa - what exactly does that tell us about where the plane went down?

At this point its been almost three months since the plane disappeared. Enough time for floating wreckage to drift halfway around the world.

I think our chances of ever finding the crash site are becoming vanishingly small. And discussion of the issue maybe ought to start to grapple with the fact that - despite our tremendous resources of technology - there are some terrestrial things that may never be known or found. Some mysteries we may never figure out.
 

bradl

macrumors 603
Jun 16, 2008
5,927
17,409
If they can locate the crash site, the black boxes will be found eventually. It took two years to locate AF447's black boxes because while they found debris, took them awhile to locate the main site where it settled on the ocean floor.

And considering we are not looking at a mid air breakup and it being some kind of deliberate action, find the wreckage, you'll find the BB's.

Agreed here. It is more than likely that this went down in one piece, so the range of the crash site won't so far spread out, like it may have in the case of CAL611.

With the Navy having just completed that part of the search, that appears to be independent of Inmarsat releasing the flight data they had from MAS370, so we're definitely back at nothing.

BL.
 

0007776

Suspended
Jul 11, 2006
6,473
8,170
Somewhere
If they can locate the crash site, the black boxes will be found eventually. It took two years to locate AF447's black boxes because while they found debris, took them awhile to locate the main site where it settled on the ocean floor.

And considering we are not looking at a mid air breakup and it being some kind of deliberate action, find the wreckage, you'll find the BB's.

With AF447 they at least found some wreckage after just a couple days so they had a better starting point. If you find debris now they will have drifted far from the crash site and locating that will be difficult if not impossible.

If three months from now an identifiable piece of wreckage washed up on the shores of Peru or South Africa - what exactly does that tell us about where the plane went down?

At this point its been almost three months since the plane disappeared. Enough time for floating wreckage to drift halfway around the world.

I think our chances of ever finding the crash site are becoming vanishingly small. And discussion of the issue maybe ought to start to grapple with the fact that - despite our tremendous resources of technology - there are some terrestrial things that may never be known or found. Some mysteries we may never figure out.

If we find wreckage it probably won't give us a great idea of where the crash site is, but they might be able to use it to get an idea of why the plane went down assuming it was something other than a deliberate action by the pilot.
 

quagmire

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 19, 2004
6,910
2,338
With AF447 they at least found some wreckage after just a couple days so they had a better starting point. If you find debris now they will have drifted far from the crash site and locating that will be difficult if not impossible.

I know. Just stating if the main wreckage site can be found( through the use of sonar, etc), the BB's will eventually be found.

Where in a case of a mid-air breakup, I would be saying it would probably be close to zero chance of locating the BB's.
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
Other than the BBs have not been found yet, and not where they hoped to find them... I'm not seeing any evidence that plane is not - more or less - where they've been looking. Part of the CNN story even states that there are places in or near the primary search area they haven't looked at yet simply due to the depth limits of the equipment. It also looks like Australia still believes the BBs are in the area as they are merely taking some time to arrange contracts with companies that have the ability to search in deeper waters than the the current equipment can.

It also doesn't surprise me that no wreckage has been found on a beach. There is a lot Australian coastline nearby, and with a very low population density. There could be half an airplane's worth of wreckage on the beaches and it may be years before someone wanders onto those beaches to find them. It may just be bad luck that none of the wreckage has managed to float up onto a beach regularly used by folks in the area.

just my 2¢ worth...

===

Update - just reading a bit more. The stories appear to be saying that the very localized areas they were searching based on the pings have been thoroughly searched. Now they are looking at whether the pings were from something else (and not the BBs) or if the pings may have bounced and echoed and therefore are from the plane's BBs - but are at a distance further than originally thought. It still seems that they are searching that area... just not the initial very localized areas they started with.
 
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