Hi all,
But to even consider bringing such a plane up from that depth... perhaps the dead are better left in peace, I just cannot imagine anyone wanting to disturb this grave more than necessary (FDR and CVR)
This varies between nationalities. For example, when the "Estonia" ship sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 claiming 852 lives lost, many Swedish mourners (most of the fatalities were from Sweden) demanded the bodies to be recovered while the Estonian and Finnish were more towards the "let them rest there in peace" opinion.
This may have been influenced by the fact that at the time of "Estonia"'s sinking the deepwater robots were not nearly as advanced as nowadays. So bringing up the bodies (or indeed the whole ship) would have been technically a huge task, certainly much more difficult than with an airplane.
Originally Posted by ushumgal
For one thing, the wreckage will doubtless tell us much more about what happened.
I don't quite see what it could tell us beyond what BEA has already published, and beyond what photographs of the sea floor would tell us. Our hope for revealing the causes of this accident sits in the FDR and CVR.
It depends. If the FDR and CVR would indicate that the cause is something structural, it may be worthwhile to recover at least those parts to get closer to the real cause.
And of course if the FDR and CVR are not found or are not usable, the puzzle needs to be solved using the parts that are found.
One scenario might be to first map out the wreckage area and, if possible, identify the various pieces that are found. Then later recover the interesting bits.