Page 2 - Les Abin News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Went on the air is can the black boxes be turned off? >> les? >> no. the only -- well, let me recant that. yes, they can throw a circuit breaker. they can be turned off. but it takes -- you have to climb into the electronic and engineering compartment. and it's a real process to get down there to do it. >> i just want to jump in on this question. i want to advance that question. excellent question about can the black boxes be removed. can they be or should they be deployable in the event of an accident, as in some cases they are in the military. in other words, in the plane in extreme, the bla...

We don't know. probably not. les, let's have you answer this one. this is from jojo wants to know. can ocean shield also deploy men in small boats with portable pinger detectors like the chinese did? well, we're not sure the chinese did anyway. but go ahead. >> listen, that's not my sorry of expertise. i'm not going to touch that one. ask me some pilot stuff and i'll try to answer that. >> mary schiavo, mary, you answer this from joe? can ocean shield also deploy men in small boats with portable pinger detectors like the chinese did? hang on. we can't hear mary. did we get mary yet? nope. no a...

Is a magnetic anomaly detector, then that's exactly what the p-3 orion uses to detect submarines just under the surface of the ocean. i think these types of equipments and technologies are optimized for submarines. they're not optimized to find aircraft or debris that have crashed into the ocean. it all depends really on what the material is that you're looking for. if you're looking for a ferrous piece of metal, you might be able to pick something up. but if it's not large, it's not going to be affecting the earth's magnetic field, and that's what these mag booms do, they detect a difference ...

So important, in the words of a former ntsb investigator, if there was a problem with the plane, it could be fleet wide. and if that's the case and no one knows about it, he said guess what? they'll know about it the next time it happens. and that's not good at all. of course, the same is true of unidentified security issues. cnn, washington. >> renee, thank you very much. my panel is back now. les, you fly 777 how important do you think it is to find this missing passenger jet to determine exactly what went wrong and how to improve. how important is that? >> it's extremely important. the publ...

The surface, nothing tangible to give a start point to this deployment. and so this is the result of some incredibly clever and very, very thorough analysis by the people in kuala lumpur to get the ocean shield to the right place. and then, you know, it's just been amazing to get that hit in such a short time. >> les abin, usually you find debris first, and you don't get a ping from the black box. >> i think every part of this situation, it's unprecedented. but one of the things that i was considering, assuming that we found exactly, you know, the black boxes is just by position there was an i...