Black box developer doubts chances of finding missing plane data recorder

One of the Australian scientists who took part in the latter stages of the development of the first flight data recorder reckons searchers might never find the black box from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.[Special coverage]

Dr Bill Schofield, who worked as a researcher for black box inventor, Australian scientist Dr David Warren, at the now defunct Royal Aeronautical Society in the 1960s, said he believed the MH370 black box would be almost impossible to find in the vast stretch of the southern Indian Ocean, where the aircraft is thought to have crashed.

Speaking to Xinhua by phone from his Melbourne home Monday, Schofield said the tragedy had highlighted the limitations of the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.

"All they are today are a computer with a hard disc that records an enormous amount of information -- just about all the information you could possibly think of on an aeroplane is recorded on them," he said.

"I've got to say I think their chances of finding this black box in very deep water when they don't know where it went down within an area of 1,000 km are practically nil," said Schofield, a former director of the Aeronautical and Maritime Research Laboratory at the Australian government's Defense Science and Technology Organization.

One alternative to the aircraft data recorder and radar monitoring would be satellite transmission of flight data, but the world would need a satellite system that could handle a huge volume of data, he said.

"This plane was well outside normal trunk routes where you can download information as it goes along. There are no downloading stations in the southern Indian Ocean," he said.

"It could transmit it all up to a satellite, but can you imagine how many aeroplanes are flying at any one time in the world and all of them saturating the satellite time? Satellite time is very valuable anyway. It would mean an awful lot of satellites."

A longer battery life for the black box locator "pinger" was also possible, but the effects of an environment like the southern Indian Ocean were still unknown.

"Look how deep the water is. You're talking about kilometers- deep water 5 km deep. A more powerful signal would be great if you didn't drop it at the bottom of very deep water. The pressure of the water would be extreme," he said.