V-Flyer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8664127.stm

It seems that they have found the location of the black boxes lost in the demise of AF447.
The pingers are of course dead but they were able to use the data from the initial search to pinpoint where they are.

They are unsure of whether they can actually recover them though.

Ed

The 'trying to find a shoe box in Paris' analogy shows the scale of the task they still have to actually locate never mind retrieve these boxes

I can't imagine there would be any useful data left on the recorders after having spent nearly a year at the bottom of the ocean. Thats assuming that they can actually bring them to the surface in the first place.

That aircraft had digital records on board, pretty much just large flash drives, so the data should be good to go.

Seems (1 year later!) they actually have located the wreckage now.

Jeffers555 wrote:I can't imagine there would be any useful data left on the recorders after having spent nearly a year at the bottom of the ocean. Thats assuming that they can actually bring them to the surface in the first place.

The tapes used for airline black boxes are now solid state drives and not 'tapes'. Assuming the boxes are undamaged, it will take some time and care, but there will be good hope that data is recoverable.

So, this could be the start of a new phase of understanding what happened to AF447. Let's not forget that wherever they are, and at whatever depth, the searchers are trying to discover details in what is still a mass grave.