Apart from the initial flurry there seems to have been little in the press in the last couple of days regarding the search for the black boxes.

The ‘Alseamar’ experts onboard the French navy ship ‘Laplace’ have what they say is a ‘unique detector’ that is specifically designed to listen for the ‘pings’ whilst simultaneously filtering out other background underwater noise.

They initially lower the ‘detector’ to a depth of 1000m and then ‘listen’;…it can reportedly pick up the ‘pings’ within a radius of 4000m. I assume(?) they then lower the detector successively and hone the position until they eventually pin-point the black box positions precisely.

I’ve emailed François Xavier de Cointet (CEO of Alseamar) and asked for an update if possible.

I'm still baffled by the claim that the same aircraft made three emergency landings in the 24 hours befpre the crash, although I see that the news channel France 3 which first ran the story has now 'downgraded' the emergencies by stating that the plane didn't conduct 'a proper emergency landing'. However, they still claim that the plane was 'forced to turn back at least three times during the 24 hours preceding the crash'.

I still think someone would have noticed and it would have been mentioned before now!

To confuse the issue somewhat, Le Parisien is reporting that ACARS alerts were triggered on three occasions in the 24 hours before the crash, but that the flights continued as planned.

Le Parisien article from Google translate

https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...php&edit-text=

Original Le Parisien article (for those fluent in French as Google translate sometimes misses the subtle nuances!)

http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-diver...16-5848875.php

Just on the face of it (so not based on any in-depth knowledge of emergency procedures!) the three instances of ACARS alerts sounds more plausible than three instances of the plane having to turn round and land back at its point of departure.

No media coverage about Phoenix Express 2016 May 17 to May 27.

Phoenix Express 2016 was kicked off May 17, in the Mediterranean. Navies from Europe, North Africa, and the United States gathered to begin the 10th iteration of the exercise. It is designed to improve regional cooperation, increase maritime domain awareness information-sharing practices, and operational capabilities to enhance efforts to achieve safety and security in the Mediterranean Sea. This year’s exercise control group will be hosted at the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Training Center (NMIOTC) located in Souda Bay, Greece, but training will take place throughout the Mediterranean to include North African nations’ territorial waters.Participating nations in Phoenix Express 2016 include Algeria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States. NATO Shipping Center is also scheduled to participate. The at-sea portion of the exercise will test North African, European, and U.S. forces’ abilities to combat illegal migration, illicit trafficking, and movement of materials for weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, participating forces will work together to practice procedures of search-and-rescue in cases where vessels are in distress.............

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=94805

http://navaltoday.com/2016/05/18/exe...way-in-greece/

“ Sometimes these sensors are disturbed by moisture or steam air conditioning on board overheated cabins. But these facilities have been significantly improved in recent times not to initiate and issue false alarms. "

I agree with you cough, that reports of the plane having to turn back and make emergency landings in the 24hrs previous to the crash seem extremely speculative. There has been no verification(to best of my knowledge) from any source that these ‘emergency landings’ ever actually happened.

Maybe this kind of alarm message is fairly common/routine and could be found embedded in the ACARS reports of many aircraft;…possibly nothing more an ‘indication’ …that never actually makes it to a full-blown state of emergency scenario.

I have no detailed knowledge of ACARS either so what I’ve typed is possibly complete rubbish!

P.S. The R/V John Lethbridge has just tied up (0930am) by the bunker station in Trapani harbour;…if the ship is back at sea by lunch-time she will be in the search zone by 2pm on Thursday. That’s assuming a scorching 9 knots all the way. Let’s hope the black boxes have been pin-pointed by then!

Here is a pic of the crash site (arrowed) which shows the sea-bed topography approx 9000ft deep.

Not easy to judge how hostile the terrain actually is from that map but things could have been much more difficult if the crash site had been 50 miles to the north-west.

Still no recent updates from the authorities as to how the black box search is going.

Perhaps that's a good thing in a way, the amount of "official" statements released then rescinded was a tad embarrassing.

ETA: Thanks for the link btw.

The R/V John Lethbridge’s present course appears to show the vessel heading for Alexandria rather than the search zone.

However, AIS position updates have become rather infrequent since she left Trapani;…understandable I guess given the sensitive nature of the task,… against the backdrop of all the other stuff that’s going on in that part of the MED.

Quite why the ship is bound for Alexandria and not the search zone directly is something of a mystery;…or it could be the R/V John Lethbridge is keeping well south of Crete before turning toward the search zone.

After the initial (and very swift) press release about the rapid discovery of the black box ‘pings’ there has been nothing further from the search company ‘Alseamar’;…in fact no updates from any quarter for almost a week.

The silence is almost deafening;…apart from this bit of total nonsense that appeared yesterday. Very quickly debunked,… most notably because of the ‘sunshine’ through the windows.

Alseamar have finally updated their website!...the power of DS GD, eh;…well maybe not;

….there is little more than we already know to be honest.

http://www.alseamar-alcen.com/news


For anyone like me , who is interested in the technical aspects of the underwater search, they’ve provided two links specifically about the ‘ping detector’.

http://www.aeronewstv.com/en/lifesty...black-box.html

http://www.alseamar-alcen.com/acoust...stems-detector


P.S. still no news from R/V John Lethbridge;…the last position update was 6 a.m. yesterday morning.

Thanks for the update. That's an impressive tool.

Is the John Lethbridge expected to reach its destination tomorrow do you know?

….assuming R/V John Lethbridge has maintained her speed the vessel will be in the search zone tomorrow morning,….or,…the vessel will be in Alexandria, Egypt tomorrow.

The ships heading after leaving Trapani, Sicily suggested she was bound for Alexandria;

….quite why, I can only guess.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-3...2-days/7457618

" ... the DOS specialised ship left the Irish sea Saturday and it will reach the perceived crash site only in around 12 days, after having the Egyptian and French investigators embark in Alexandria."

Seems logical. I'm sure that if they were in a real hurry they could transfer at sea, but they probably also have to deal with shore-bound bureaucrats armed with bundles of red tape!

Thanks for that.

Well spotted cough;

…real ‘hurry’ doesn’t appear to be a priority, given that the vessel was in Trapani just 3 days ago and the extra sunshine cruise to Alexandria, and thence the search zone, will add a day (or maybe more) to the overall voyage.

I’ve been to Alexandria a few times (albeit a while ago) and the Egyptian port bureaucracy was far from swift;…hopefully things are more efficient these days...(but I wouldn't bet on it!)

Even the BBC are struggling for a meaningful update it would seem.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-1...-wreck/7498428

“The ship (John Lethbridge) is en route and " should arrive in the area as from Friday(10 June)", BEA director Remi Jouty told reporters.”

One would assume R/V John Lethbridge will be in the search zone by now;…however, I’m not sure if they’ll be able to offer much immediate assistance because,….

“A French navy vessel (LaPlace) using deep-water listening devices picked up signals from one of the black boxes over a week ago, but so far it has failed to locate either it or the second recorder.”


"For the moment we are hopeful of managing to locate these recorders while they continue to emit [pings]," Mr Jouty said, acknowledging they had "to be quick".

The search for the black boxes does not appear to be going well does it?;..it’s 23 days since the crash and the pings will be emitted for approx 30 days or so.

If the ‘pings’ are exhausted before the black boxes are accurately located then the search will presumably(??) be handed over to R/V John Lethbridge and they’ll use their 'remotely operated underwater vehicle’ (ROV) to recover the black boxes when (and if) they are successfully located.

There are very few instances when black boxes have been recovered from deep underwater;…however it can be done.

In 1987 one of the black boxes from a crashed S.African Airways Boeing-747 was recovered from a phenomenal depth of 16,100 feet;..the second black box was never found.

The search and eventual recovery of the black boxes from the 2009 Air France Flight-447 crash in the Atlantic took almost 2 years!

The Atlantic is obviously more foreboding than the Mediterranean but the Air France-447 black boxes were eventually recovered in a depth of water not too dissimilar to that in which MS804 is sitting. In addition those recovered black boxes were (very unexpectedly) lying in relatively flat sandy terrain;

…who knows how Egypt Air MS804 is positioned.

*************************

In June 2014 R/V John Lethbridge was commissioned to help in the search for Malaysian Airways MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean;…however, in August 2014 the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) raised objections regarding the purported “lack of efficiency” of the ‘John Lethbridge’ and as such the ship was never used in the search for MH370.

Deep Ocean Search (DOS),the owners/operators of R/V John Lethbridge, sought clarification from ATSB on their, quote “unfounded, inaccurate and strange assertions ” but without success.

DOS, however, claimed they demonstrated that the R/V John Lethbridge ‘spread’ is much more efficient and more effective than any other vessel and system on (MH370) site.

Although Laplace hasn't 'located' either of the black boxes, it has narrowed down the source of the pings to within around 1200m.

The equipment on Laplace is a towed device which records sounds and the analysis for any 'pings' is carried out after the device has been recovered. As such, an approximate location can be calculated by triangulation.

However the John Lethbridge has more sophisticated equipment including what's been described as 'directional hydrophones' which, I'm guessing, work in real time. In combination with the side-scan sonar and real-time video, they should be able to home in on any pings.

... at least, that's my understanding of it!

Have you got a source for that, cough;..I’d be interested in reading it;..thanks.

The Alseamar specialists onboard ‘LaPlace’ use their ‘Detector-1000’ equipment to locate the pings initially;…they lower the ‘Detector-1000’ on a static line down to a depth of 300m,…record the pings,…retrieve the ‘Detector-1000’,…then analyse the results.

The search location is then refined/narrowed and the whole ‘Detector-1000’ process is repeated;

…each time getting progressively closer to the black box ‘ping’ location.

At some point, when the search area has been sufficiently refined/honed , the ‘Detector-1000’ is dispensed with and they deploy their ‘GIB-Plus’ system which appears to be a number (3+) of surface buoys, all linked by radio that can listen to, and accurately triangulate the position of, the black boxes on the sea-bed. That’s seems to be the process so far as I can ascertain.

The initial search with the ‘Detector-1000’ would seem to be a bit time consuming but the 2nd stage, using the ‘GIB-Plus’ buoys, is probably (???) quite swift.

I’ve no idea how far into the search ‘timeline’ they actually are but with all the equipment and expertise onboard Laplace and R/V John Lethbridge we’ll surely have a successful outcome soon;….I sincerely hope so anyway.

I knew I should have bookmarked the pages, but I had over a dozen of them open, including Google Translate versions of French articles!

Trawling through my search history, I'm struggling to find the reference to 'around 1200m' () and the best I can come up with is a couple of reports stating that the location has been narrowed to 1-2 km; this being one in English ...

http://www.maritime-executive.com/ar...gyptair-search

I know I didn't misread 1-2 km as 1 point 2 km, but sometimes strange and inexplicable things happen between my ears (), so unless I can find the original quote, I'm going to ignore the 'around 1.2km' bit!

In fact, applying a bit of logic, I can imagine someone saying "about a km", "1 to 2 km", or "within a couple of km", but "around 1.2 km" comes across as a bit too precise for an estimate, and also doesn't tally with someone converting from miles to km.

…thanks for that, cough.

1-2Km or 1.2Km,…whichever it is they seem to be making progress;…that’s the important thing.

The black boxes are expected to stop emitting signals on the 24th June. I'm not sure why such a precise date has been quoted as that works out at 36 days battery life so is longer than expected.

Initial reports that the plane swerved before disappearing from radar screen have been confirmed by Egyptian military radar. Quite why the Egyptians dismissed the evidence of the Greek and British radars when their own military radar showed the same thing is somewhat baffling. Not surprising ... just baffling!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eg...-idUSKCN0YZ26Q

...interesting link cough.

The battery-life of the ULB (underwater ‘pinger’ locator beacon) that is attached to each of the two blackbox recorders is often quoted as ‘4 to 5 weeks’;…so the upper figure of 5 weeks is probably where the ‘36th day’ deadline date has come from.

The ULB and its associated circuitry/battery are just not ‘techie’ enough for anyone to ascertain exactly how long the battery will hold out for.

In view of no new official updates today, some may find the following info to be of interest…..

The ULB is the battery operated unit which actually generates the ‘pings’;…to the best of my knowledge the search teams have only detected the ‘pings’ from one of the blackboxes;…there should be two sets of acoustic ‘pings’,..one from each blackbox.

The two separate blackboxes are usually both located in the tail of the plane and each one performs a different function:-

Blackbox 1-The CVR ‘Cockpit Voice Recorder’ is, unsurprisingly, used to record the crew conversations and monitor any sounds that occur within the cockpit.

Blackbox 2 – The FDR ‘Flight Data Recorder’ records the many different operating functions of a plane all at once, such as the time, altitude, airspeed, heading, wing/flap movements, auto-pilot, fuel gauge and countless other functions.

The ULB’s are physically very small (a 4 inch long silver coloured cylinder) and they can sometimes become detached from the main body of blackbox in the event of a crash;

…finding the ‘pinger’ does not necessarily mean they’ve pin-pointed the blackbox.

The ULB’s should have their lithium battery checked every 24 months,… and replaced every 6 years.

The ULB ‘underwater activation switch’ should be cleaned periodically as it can become contaminated with moisture/debris etc,… which in turn can very slowly drain the battery, rendering the ‘pinger’ unit useless in the event of a crash.

…I wonder how rigorous Egypt Air’s maintenance schedules are?

The American NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) have instances on record where the ULB’s ‘underwater activation switch’ has become accidentally activated and started the unit ‘pinging’ (completely unnoticed by anyone) which then drained the battery;

…there is no way to ascertain if the battery is in good condition without physically checking it.

************
For anyone interested in the technical side of the ULB innards;….

…the acoustic ‘pings’ are generated (inside the cylindrical 4 inch long ULB casing) by a ‘piezo ceramic transducer ring’ which is a small component that physically flexes when an electric current is applied. It emits a short ultrasonic 37.5KHz sound pulse ( a ‘ping’ ) of 10 milli-seconds duration;..one ‘ping’ per second.

This ultra-sonic sound pulse (37.5KHz) is propagated through the body of the ULB, which in turn, radiates acoustic energy into the surrounding water;..in this case the Mediterranean Sea.

The small lithium battery that powers the ULB is housed inside the unit itself. It’s very low-tech stuff really.

In the interim, does anyone know if anything at all is turning up in the way of debris and/or bodies ?

In the early days, we were told that there were very small pieces of wreckage found, and also very incomplete body parts. Is that still the case or is everything else, pretty much, still missing.

I know this sort of talk is largely frowned upon, but it does seem very strange that nothing of any significance is showing up, given the reasonably defined position of the plane going down.

I doubt there would be many bodies or large parts of debris. When Swissair 111 crashed they recovered about 15,000 body parts, there were 229 passengers on the plane. This could be a similar situation. A small bit of bone or limbs here and there, which will be carried away by the currents or even eaten by marine life. I know it's not nice, but I doubt there are many whole bodies around. The Germanwings and flyDubai crashes would have been similar. High speed impacts with the ground will have decimated both the plane and people inside. MH17 was a bit different in that it broke up mid air, so bodies would have fallen and remained mostly intact or would have remained strapped to seats etc, giving them a bit of protection.

The wreckage is a similar case. The plane remained mostly intact until hitting the water, or so we are told and the parts that haven't sunk yet will be widespread by the currents by now, if not recovered. I am surprised we haven't seen the tail yet, that normally survives more or less intact and is usually one of the first things seen floating or sticking out of debris fields.

“Egyptian officials probing the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 said Monday the plane veered off course before plunging into the sea, suggesting an abrupt in-flight explosion didn’t bring down the aircraft. ”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-egyp...ion-1465852313

I don’t quite buy the latest theories suggesting that because the plane appeared (on radar screens) to bank left and then spiral downwards that is an indication that the aircraft was NOT brought down by an onboard explosive device;…i.e. because the plane wasn’t instantly blasted to pieces then it probably wasn’t a bomb.

However, onboard bombs don’t need to be very large to bring down a plane.

The explosion that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 (Lockerbie) in 1988 was caused by a small amount of plastic explosive thought to be about 12oz-16oz,( approx 400 grams)

The blast appears to have been pretty much confined to the forward cargo bay, but the effect was catastrophic.

The explosion blew a 50cm diameter hole in the fuselage which quickly led to the plane losing control. It broke up ’mid-air’ into several main composite parts as it plummeted earthward.

I suspect that the radar tracking of Pan Am flight 103 may have looked very similar to the radar track of EgyptAir MS804’s last moments;

...however, I don’t profess to be an expert on mid-air explosions so I could be completely wrong.

Wreckage found.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36543969