Related: Malaysia Flight 370 May Never Be Found
I told you it would reappear; meanwhile, the kidnapping case has disappeared.
"As time runs out, sound locators search for Flight 370’s black boxes" by Nick Perry | Associated Press April 05, 2014
PERTH, Australia — Four weeks after the Malaysia Airlines jet vanished, two ships deployed sound locators Friday in the southern Indian Ocean in a desperate attempt to find the plane’s flight recorders before their signal beacons fall silent.
Officials leading the multinational search for Flight 370 said there was no specific information that led to the underwater devices being used for the first time, but that they were brought into the effort because there was nothing to lose.
The air and sea search has not turned up any wreckage from the Boeing 777 that could lead searchers to the plane and perhaps its flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or ‘‘black boxes.’’
The recorders could help investigators determine why the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, veered so far off-course.
Beacons in the black boxes emit ‘‘pings’’ so they can be more easily found, but the batteries only last about a month.
Two ships with sophisticated equipment that can hear the pings made their way Friday along a 150-mile route investigators hope may be close to the spot where officials believe Flight 370 went down.
It's their "best guess" and "time is running out."
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Because the US Navy’s pinger locator can pick up signals to a depth of 20,000 feet, it should be able to hear the plane’s data recorders even if they are in the deepest part of the search zone — about 19,000 feet. But that’s only if the locator gets within range of the black boxes — a tough task, given the size of the search area and the fact that the pinger locator must be dragged slowly through the water at just 1 to 5 knots, or 1 to 6 miles per hour.
I sometimes get the feeling they don't want to find what is not there.
The type of locator being used is a 30-inch cylindrical microphone that is towed underwater in a grid pattern behind a ship.
It’s attached to about 20,000 feet of cable and is guided through the ocean depths by a yellow, triangular carrier with a shark fin on top. It looks like a stingray and has a wingspan of 3 feet.
Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as officials can then use data on currents to try to backtrack to where the plane hit the water, and where the flight recorders may be.
But with no wreckage found so far, officials can’t be confident they’re looking in the right place, said Geoff Dell, discipline leader of accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia.
‘‘They might be lucky and they might start smack bang right over the top of it,’’ Dell said. ‘‘But my guess is that’s not going to be the case and they’re in for a lengthy search.’’
I'm done looking.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
They are still tracking it; I am not.
"Chinese ship reports signal possibly linked to lost jet" by Kirk Semple | New York Times April 06, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A Chinese vessel that is part of a multinational search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean reported Saturday that an underwater sensor had picked up a “pulse signal,” of the same frequency used by locator devices on planes, China’s official news agency said.
The devices, which use a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz, are attached to aircraft data and voice recorders, commonly known as black boxes, which are crucial to determining the causes of airplane crashes.
Hours after the report, the Australian chief coordinator of the Indian Ocean search, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said “the characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box.” He also noted that white objects had been spotted floating in the water about 55 miles from the area where the sounds were heard.
But he urged caution, saying the reports could not be immediately verified — a sentiment also expressed by Malaysian and Chinese officials.
“There is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft,” said Houston, chief of the Joint Agency Coordination Center, an Australian government group.
False alerts can be triggered by sea life, including whales, or by noise from ships. Australian officials reported last week that an alert sounded on the British Royal Navy vessel HMS Echo, which is equipped with black box detection equipment, but the signal turned out to be false.
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Despite the lack of confirmation, the news from the Chinese ship generated excitement about the possibility that after four weeks of fruitless searching, officials might finally be zeroing in on concrete evidence of the plane and its fate.
Since Flight 370 veered off its scheduled path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 and dropped off civilian and military radar, no trace of the plane has been found....
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