What's Next?
Aviation experts say it may take months to years to recover wreckage and the cockpit voice and flight data recorders of the Boeing 777. It could also take years before an accident report is released with a probable cause.
Analysis of satellite data is a very preliminary step, and
wreckage and the recorders must be recovered before facts are established, says former National Transportation Safety Board accident investigator Al Yurman.
"Some parts have to be recovered and positively identified that they came from that Malaysia Airlines plane," Yurman says.
Once there is positive identification, investigators "have to backtrack" and find a debris field to determine whether the plane made a controlled or an uncontrolled descent into the ocean, he says.
A debris field "could be 20 miles or hundreds of miles" from where satellite images showed what is believed to be wreckage of the Malaysian jumbo jet.
Former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall says there could be multiple debris fields. He says much depends on ocean currents that could have scattered wreckage. "We don't know how many debris fields there are," Hall says.
Hall and Yurman say the depth of the ocean may make it difficult to recover wreckage, and
they expect most or much of the wreckage to go unrecovered.
The U.S. Navy is moving a black-box locator into the area of the Indian Ocean where searchers are looking for wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines plane, the Department of Defense said Monday. The move "is a precautionary measure in case a debris field is located," the department said. If a debris field is confirmed, the Navy's Towed Pinger Locator 25 "will add a significant advantage" in locating the missing jet's black box, the department said. Navy Commander Chris Budde said the locator has "highly sensitive listening capability" that "can hear the black box pinger down to a depth of about 20,000 feet."
Neither Hall nor Yurman expect wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines plane to be reconstructed on land to give investigators clues to the cause of the crash, as was done by U.S. and Canadian aviation authorities after jetliners crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in two accidents two decades ago.
Causes of airline accidents are not always found. "The probable cause of the Malaysia Airlines accident could end up undetermined," Yurman says.
Yurman says that,
until wreckage is recovered and more information is learned — particularly from the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders — he could not speculate whether the plane crashed from mechanical problems or actions of anyone in the cockpit.
The search for wreckage is very costly. Hall says an international agreement to divide the cost of the search must immediately be reached between the countries involved. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the search to recover the Air France wreckage, he says.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-flight-370-investigation-whats-next/6825415/
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