Saturday, April 12, 2014

Sonar technology used in the Malaysia Airlines flight 370 search

The Southern Indian Ocean is a little traveled location known for it's atrocious weather. The probable search area epitomizes the phrase "in the middle of nowhere" and it's hard to imagine a worse place to look for a missing aircraft.

If the Malaysia Airline's Boeing 777 is indeed at the current search location this will be the second deepest effort attempted to recover the flight, and cockpit voice data recorders on record. The deepest recovery to date was South African Airway's flight 295 cockpit voice recorder at a depth of 16,000 feet in 1988.

The second deepest to date is the 2009 Air France's flight 447 crash whose cockpit voice, and flight data recorders were brought to the surface from approximately 13,000 feet two years later. The underwater locating beacons had long failed before these two aircraft were found. The current Malaysia Airlines flight 370 search area is about 14,000 feet deep. 

Dukane Seacom DK-120 locator beacon