Air France tragedy: Time to require black boxes that float? (They exist)

Perhaps it's time to require airlines to install floating, "deployable" black boxes on their aircraft. Wouldn't ya think?

Searchers are looking at a  tough hunt for the "black boxes" that will help them unravel the mystery of Air France flight 447's crash in the Atlantic.

According to the Associated Press:

"...if the black boxes are at the bottom of the sea, their recovery will have to wait for the arrival early next week of a French research ship with remotely controlled submersibles that can explore as deeply as 19,600 feet (6,000 meters)."

The boxes -- one for cockpit conversations with the ground and among the crew, one for data gathered on some 400 processes on the plane -- are built into the tail sections of airliners. These are the sections most likely to endure a crash intact. But finding the tail section, if it's still intact, then getting the black boxes back, will be challenging. Again, from the AP:

The head of France's accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said in Paris that he is "not optimistic" about recovering the recorders — and that investigators should be prepared to continue the probe without them."It is not only deep, it is also mountainous," he said. "We might find ourselves blocked at some point by the lack of material elements."

The encouraging news: This summer, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US National Transportation Safety Board, and the US Federal Aviation Administration will be conducting a  feasibility study on the use of deployable recorders for airliners.

The not-so-encouraging news: The US military has been using them for years. It's a technology well in hand. That's the word from Jim Hall, a former head of the NTSB. (Truth in advertising: His Washington D.C. firm consults for one of several companies that make the devices.)

These deployable recorders, first developed in Canada, don't replace the existing black boxes. Instead, they serve as a back-ups. If the main boxes can't be recovered, these would still be available.

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