ancient black box that recorded very few parameters and didn t really shed light on what happened. if you look at other crashes at sea, virgin air 301 which crasheded in july of 95, in the dominican republic, they never recovered the airplane. they recovered the boxes. and about three hours after that they knew what had happened. it s difficult at sea but it s by no means impossible. and there are some crashes on line where the terrain is so rugged it becomes very difficult. i would suspect that finding out what happened to this plane is going to be arduous but will be thorough and will be accomplished. it just won t be quick. and important to note that all we know at the moment is that this plane has gone missing. they ve lost all contact with the plane. we know more than that. it doesn t necessarily mean it s crashed though, does it? no. we know more than that. we know that it sure isn t in the air. because it didn t have fuel to keep flying for this long.