Disappearing Airliners!

[787PIC]

As with the Malaysian 777, the clock is running down fast on locating the "black boxes" on the missing Egyptian 320.
We all know there is only a limited time to find the pings from those boxes and we missed the window with MH370. Now we are facing that fast approaching deadline with MS804!
There is no place for national pride or other political silliness when it comes to air safety. Malaysians waited too long, or actually never asked for help.
We have the technology in the west to find the faintest sounds of life or machine under water.
I don't think US or anyone else should show up for dinner uninvited, but if I were Egyptian, I would ask the world for help.
For example, the P-3 Orion, the "Submarine Hunter" was offered to them but we never heard any more about it being still active in the search!
Although an ancient aircraft, P-3 has the most sophisticated eavesdropping technology and could have helped finding signals or metal by now. Why not use it along with French and Italian surface vessels?
Perhaps this time, we get more serious about using the existing technology available on our modern airliners to stream real time data, and not depend on the antiqueted "boxes" we used when I was a new-hire pilot 53 years ago!
Captain Ross Aimer
UAL Ret.
CEO, Aero Consulting Experts

[Lonewolf_50]

Captain:
1. The P-3C (Update whatever) is optimized for hunting submarines. Its sonar equipment isn't optimized for signal detection on the bottom at 10,000' or so. (Well past the crush depth of most submarines of interest).
2. The Eastern Med isn't the best sub hunting water in the world. (Western Med tends to have better acoustic conditions).
3. A variety of nations have provided, upon Egypt's request, some very specialized gear that is optimized for dealing with sound, and objects, at the depth where the lost plane is expected to be.
4. Unlike the Malaysians, the Egyptians appear to have asked for help without the level of misdirection seen in the MH370 case.
5. A 6th fleet press release that is cited in the now closed MS804 thread reports that P-3's were assisting with the search, which was the search for wreckage. They did find some stuff a float. The folks with the advanced mathematical models can use a datum (estimated time of loss) and wind/current/drift tables to make decent estimates of where a plane went in.
6. As reported in that thread as well, it appears that an ELT signal on 406 MHz was received by enough satellites to inform the authorities of a good area to begin the search.