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    Longer duration batteries which last for 90 days are due to become a requirement in a year or so, following on from the Air France crash in the South Atlantic in 2009.

    However, it seems quite extraordinary in this day and age that SAR organisations are reduced to searching for two tiny pingers at the bottom of an ocean without having any precise knowledge of where the aircraft crashed.

    All it needs is one brief sentence of positional data transmitted via satellite at intervals when out over the ocean. INMARSAT and other satellite networks are quite capable of handling this and at very moderate cost.

    Also, when a ship sinks, an EPIRB is hydrostatically released which floats on the water and transmits to a satellite. On an aircraft, an ELT is released by G force during the crash and also transmits to a satellite. This did not happen with MH370 and I am not sure whether this was because the crash was too severe or because it was not designed to float on water.

    Another problem is the Cockpit Voice Recorder which only records for two hours, unlike a ship which records for 24 hours. This means that even if it is ever found then it will not show what happened in the vital period following switching off the transponder and ACARS and changing course. This will have been wiped and only the final two hours of the flight will be saved in memory.

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