The black box from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have over written key data, preventing investigators from ever knowing what happened during crucial moments of the flight.
Search for the wreckage of the plane continues today with the detection of 122 “credible” floating objects in the Indian Ocean, but an expert has warned the black box may be “impossible” to find.
According to The Telegraph UK, a United States black box detector is due to arrive on April 5, just two days before the black box’s pinger is due to run out of battery.
By that time it will be 28 days since the plane disappeared but Cranfield University aviation specialist David Barry said a weakened signal may continue for another 10 days.
“Given the remoteness of the site and the depth of the water and the weather down there, the black box will be almost impossible to find,” he said.
“It will then be a case of digging through the wreckage field, possibly for a couple of years.”
Even if the black box is located, it may not provide the answers that investigators are hoping for.
The plane’s communications systems were disabled in the first hour of the flight, before it took a sharp turn westward and continued flying silently for about seven hours.
The black box records cockpit communication on a two-hour loop and then deletes all but the last two hours.
Flight data would have survived but Mr Barry said: “The bit we are interested in – where they lost contact with air traffic control – would have been overridden unless power to the recorder was lost.”
Commercial airliners are obliged to carry two black boxes, the Digital Flight Data Recorder which contains data about the speed, altitude and direction, while the Cockpit Voice Recorder keeps track of cockpit conversations and other sounds and announcements in the pilots’ cabin.
This article originally appeared on News.com.au.