Slow response to past crashes could hinder EgyptAir search

PARIS/CAIRO: Teams searching for the black box flight recorders of a missing EgyptAir jet that crashed with 66 people aboard face technical constraints that aviation experts increasingly blame on a slow regulatory response to earlier disasters.

As a three-year deep-sea search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 draws towards a close in the Indian Ocean without finding the airplane, another is starting in the Mediterranean Sea where the lessons of previous crashes have yet to be applied.

Rescuers have barely 30 days until the batteries die on two underwater beacons designed to guide them to the black box flight recorders as they scour 17,000 square kilometres of sea north of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.

After previous crashes at sea, regulators agreed to increase the transmission time and range of such beacons to increase the chances of finding evidence and preventing future accidents.

The changes, trebling the life of the ‘pingers’ to 90 days, were first recommended by French investigators in late 2009, six months after the crash of an Air France plane in the Atlantic.

But they were only adopted in response to the disappearance over four years later of Malaysia’s missing MH370 and do not come into effect until 2018: too late to help find EgyptAir 804.

French investigators say the Egyptian jet sent warnings indicating that smoke was detected on board.

The signals did not indicate what caused the smoke, and aviation experts have not ruled out deliberate sabotage or a technical fault. Egypt has sent a robot submarine to join the hunt.

It is the second time in little more than a year that sea search operations have been forced to rely on decades-old black-box technology after an AirAsia plane crashed into the Java Sea.

Delays in implementing the changes to the beacons to extend their battery life and improve the chances of finding the black boxes have been criticised by a number of experts including the former head of the French BEA agency, which is helping the search for Egyptair.

"The battery situation is pretty scandalous," Jean-Paul Troadec, who headed the French government BEA air accident investigative agency during much of the Air France probe, told Reuters.

"It hardly costs anything to install new batteries. There was no reason to wait until 2018."

In the first days after a crash at sea, the priority is to use passive devices capable of listening for the pinger’s clicking pulse.

Once these die, searchers must use sonar devices and robots, which are costly and time-consuming.

It took two years to find Air France 447 in the Atlantic this way.

"You can imagine the pressure this 30-day deadline creates," Troadec said.

Manufacturers say that implementing the recommendations to extend the life of a beacon is not just a simple switch.

"Industry does not develop technology overnight and for the aircraft manufacturers to be ready, two years seems reasonable," a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency said.