Originally Posted by
chumley
Maybe the beacon is operating but submerged. Bit early to make that comment.
Well the authorities are quoted that they went looking for a beacon and couldn't find one. The idea is that one floats to the surface to identify position and then the underwater beacon pinpoints the wreck. Non hardened satellite beacons are a few hundred dollars. Hardening one to withstand extreme G and also floats is not trivial. My proposal is to have several around an aircraft to try to beat the chaos theory.
The underwater locator beacon has limited range so there is a need to start the search close to the wreck, we learnt that from flight MH370.
Mjb