Page 15 - Tail Section News Today

It certainly would be of great assistance to get divers down there, of course safely. absolutely. >> mm-hmm. okay. and then what other kinds of technology doctor, do you think will likely be introduced to this area? >> its almost certain that autonomous underwater vehicles and remotely operated vehicles will be used in this. the nice thing about those types of systems is it keeps the divers out of the water until they really are needed. you know the risk goes up for personnel, and the complexity...

The critical black boxes from airasia flight 8501. the bat eye ares are designed to last a month but in some cases can actually last longer. they will fade out, not abruptly before they shut off. joining me now is the vice president of teledyne systems. good to see you. are you confident, 23 days life typical battery life of those pingers, are you confident that those searchers will find the black boxes well before that time? >> well there are a couple of things going on. im quite confident for ...

Even put that on the divers by the divers close by a section. or remotely operated equipment. once you have that you can put those in had to find them. >> and were looking at a graphic, were seeing the submersible which would be scanning the southeast floor.ocean floor. how would that assist in better locating or getting a better view of those submerged. >> the sonar, most likely the side scanners on the navy vessels are lower frequency. which means they give a grainy resolution. youre not seein...

>> well we have word from local reports over in indonesia that parts of the tail were found. of course, thats where the black boxes are. so that should give us all hope right, thomas? >> well yeah this is a relatively shallow water recovery or search-and-recovery. and given that its that finding the pieces is going to happen. this is not like mh-370. the tail section is the critical section. if they found those pieces, the time it will take femme more tome able to get to the black boxes should b...

Is hampering the search for flight 8501s flight data recorders. we know they contain valuable information. >> here are a few things you need to know about black boxes. first of all, as we said about 10,000 types they are not black, they are orange. they are located in the tail section of an airbus a-320. they store about 25 hours of information about the planes altitude air speed, engine performance, other data. then theres the cockpit voice recorder. it has two hours of interaction with air tra...

Was really not ripped apart in the air because things would have been scattered over a much wider area. so it looks from the wreckage and from the pieces of the plane that weve seen that it impacted the water at obviously very high rate of speed, not a water landing, and objects are coming from the fuselage. >> so thomas i guess the search area is now the size of delaware which is pretty sizable but, i dont know in your estimation is that so big that it will take forever to perhaps find the enti...

As it sits. >> got you. supposedly according to local reports parts of the tale have been identified and found and an oil slick by where parts of the tail were found. >> if its an oil slick and continuing to just appear and maintain itself then they could be close to the area where the main part of the plane hits. there are wrecks we dive from world war ii that are oil is still seeping out of and leaving a slick. i was on one this summer off of north carolina. >> in the tail is where you expect ...

Down so we were calculating in a v-shape where the debris might have gone. as difficult as that is, this is much more difficult because heres the situation. if you find debris, which we have here, now youve got to reverse calculate where the debris came from. so as this "v" is this way and were looking this way, now weve got the debris here, were trying to find out where this spot is, which literally could be anywhere based on the currents, on the winds. theres so many different factors in here....

Downloading is like downloading a computer disk and it looks like an ekg. what takes longer on that is to decipher it all and get the significance of what was found. but think have a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder within a couple days after finding it. >> and thomas last question for you. i know they want to bring up as much of the plane as possible. how long might that take? >> well, thats very hard to estimate. it really depends as i think was stated earlier how wide the debris field...

The black boxes and the fact that that has been complicated, are you concerned that the black boxes could move potentially while they wait out the conditions? >> i think they can move but i dont know if that will be a major move. it depends upon how much of the tail section they are in. we are talking about a major portion, they may not move. there is weight and stability with that. if its just the vertical and the horizontal there, it may be susceptible to some movement. i dont think that will ...