MH370 researchers refine their prediction of the place nobody looked

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

What makes you think the flight data and voice recorders would "disintegrate"? The batteries are long dead, but that wouldn't destroy data storage portion.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

Indeed, there won't be as much evidence after so much time and seas.

The "black boxes" (you're right; they're orange) are sealed, durable, and located in the tail of the aircraft to best survive a crash. They're likely intact, and they won't degrade much in seawater. What has failed, though, are the locator beacons. It will be a real pill to find those black boxes now.

The aircraft...probably not much left of that, and they would probably retrieve only a few things. (In shallow water, it would be torn up and dispersed by heavy seas, and in deep water, hard to recover.)

The black boxes usually give enough information to model what happened, and make a theory about why. The Flight Data Recorder logs all instrument data (speed, altitude, fuel, attitude, temperatures, engine parameters, etc),warnings, control positions, and control inputs. That's enough to figure out what they plane did.

The Cockpit Voice Recorder logs all sounds from the flight deck, including conversation, bells and beeps, clicks and swooshes and similar sounds when someone pushes buttons or moves things. If both pilots are chatting about family and then there's a cacaphony of warning bells, that's obviously a different situation than if 1 pilot is heard ranting about Amelia Earhart while there's a muffled banging on the door in the background. Or if we hear labored breathing and 1 pilot asks the flight attendant to find a doctor. If the end is just computer noises, and the pilots were never heard leaving the flight deck, we might remember Payne Stewart.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

What others have pointed out can be learned.

However there's also the human factor. The families should know. They've been told by some that it was aliens who took the plane, or that it was "hijacked" and is now on a secret island. One of the things about humans is they have "hope" and the families will and have grasped for any hope. I believe a little closure is necessary here.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

We don't know what we might learn, we'll only know if we go looking and find it.

We do know that if we don't look for it we certainly won't learn anything from it.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

> is that enough to firmly blame one of the pilots?

I do not think you quite understand the purpose of these investigations.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

No, the black boxes will last forever, batteries, of course, run out.

It did not hit the water very hard at all, since the flaperon was not damaged very badly, which surprised the engineers themselves.

Everyone wants to know if this was a technical fault, more important than finding the victims frankly since it could prevent other incidents like this.

Re: Let's get real.

"The NSA knows exactly where it is!"

I'm sure the families of the victims will be comforted by your remark.

Re: Let's get real.

@ J J Carter

Seems like, given the downvotes, you needed a 'joke alert' symbol...

Re: Let's get real.

Excuse me, are you accusing even a portion of the American Government of competency at this point?

... and I think I've heard it at least TWICE before :(

This is science. We theorise from the data we have, then we test, then we refine (or completely dump) our ideas and start all over again.

So completely different scientists in a different field did some rather innovative work with the satellite handshake data to give more information than anyone else had at the time. Then the ocean currents people got into the act, which couldn't happen earlier, as they didn't have the data. Because a lot of their data comes from the location of crash wreckage and post-crash testing of ocean currents.

Re: Go find it

Yes. Even ruling out possibilities without finding the actual cause¹⁾ would be worth it, it will help making planes and the procedures to operate them better and safer.

Also, lots of new data for marine research and more accurate maps of the ocean floor.

Very little chance of quelling the idiot conspiracy theories²⁾, though.³⁾

¹⁾ My guess is that it's either something utterly trivial that usually isn't a problem or something really weird and far-fetched that nobody hasn't even considered yet. But that's just an thoroughly unsubstantiated gut feeling.

²⁾ "The tank containing the secret chemtrail chemicals leaked and the fumes instantaneously dissolved the brain of every person on board!"⁴⁾

³⁾ "It's a cover-up! And everybody is in on it!"⁵⁾

⁴⁾ Actual quote from coworker on MH-370.

⁵⁾ Actual quote from same coworker on "faked" moon landings.

Re: Go find it

The South African Airways 747 which burnt up in the air near Mauritius was a tough one to find but they did it and managed to find both black boxes

"a machine equipped with all manner of navigational and gps transponder equipment"

There actually wasn't that much equipment, and very little of it had the ability to communicate with anything when the plane was over the ocean. The only device equipped to communicate via satellite was the engine diagnostic reporting equipment, which is what gave the two most likely paths that the plane traveled -- narrowed down to one when debris started to appear.

The pings from the engine recorder delivered no direct information about the location or status of the plane (other than engine performance stats), and only transmitted once an hour. That's an incredibly sparse amount of data to work with.

The fact of the matter is that an aircraft over the ocean, once it gets a certain distance from land, is not readily trackable.