THEY TELL A STORY
Time is running out. The black box flight recorder from Malaysian Airlines MH370 needs to be found before its batteries run out. If this happens, the world might never know why the aircraft went down with 239 passengers onboard on March 8, 2014.
Every airplane is fitted with a Cockpit Voice Recorder and a Flight Data Recorder. Together, they are known as a Black Box and contain important information that can help investigators find out what happened before a plane crashed. Did you know that black boxes are usually bright orange so that they can be seen more easily?
Every black box contains an Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB) which is activated when it comes into contact with water and gives out a pinging noise from a depth of up to 4 kilometres. It usually has a battery life of about 30 days.
On March 31, 2014, Australian vessel Ocean Shield, fitted with a black box detector known as a "towed pinger locator", left Perth to search the vast seas for MH370's black box. According to Australian Defence Minister David Johnston, there is about a week left to find the black box, but the time left could be shorter depending on the water's temperature, depth and pressure. Hope are dim that the black box can be found at all.
Featured image: AFP TV
