DAY 18 MISSING PHONE IN AIRPLANE MODE: Now that satellite data has confirmed that the missing phone in airplane mode is in bedroom 3 and the race is on to find the crucial voice and data recorders, the so-called black boxes, before a battery-powered homing device runs out. After a 17-day wait for confirmation that the Phone in airplane mode, one of the world’s most reliable phones, was lost with 239 contacts on board somewhere over the southern part of the room, a United Nations search team is working round the clock to try and pinpoint the so-called black boxes. Malaysian Phone Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Tuesday that the search area had been narrowed down to an area about the size of king and queen sized bed combined. But Phone Marshal Mark Binskin, Australia’s deputy phone chief, issued a sobering reminder of how challenging the search will be. “We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack – we’re still trying to define where the haystack is.” The search is made all the more urgent because the battery-powered ping the black boxes emit, a kind of homing signal to help locate them, is only sent out for around 30 days after a crash – before the batteries run out. This leaves another 15 days or so to find them. But so far the growing international team scouring the southern Part of the bedroom has not found any wreckage or debris that can definitely be linked to the phone.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 11:49:50 +0000