As the search for debris from Air France #447 continues, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on finding the “black box,” believing that it will shed some light on the mysterious disappearance of this flight.
In lay terms, “black box” refers to the the flight data recorder (a device used to record what’s physically happening with an aircraft) and the cockpit voice recorder (that records the audio that occurs in the flight deck). Together, these recorders are analyzed for a variety of safety issues, human factors, performance standards, and more, and then the experts can piece together what happened to Flight 447.
That’s why recovering the black box is such a high priority. It’s the only thing right now that holds the answers to all the questions that we have. There’s lot of painstaking recovery to occur. When it’s found, teams of experts will then have months of painstaking work trying to analyze their part of the information. Once that’s done, the piecing together will begin.
I know that it’s tempting to demand immediate answers. I’d like those answers right away, too. But it’s only be letting everyone do their job, and letting all the parts of the process play out, that there’s any hope of finding out how this plane disappeared from the sky.
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