The plane's “black boxes,” which are actually painted orange for visibility, are key to figuring out what caused the plane to dive suddenly and crash into a mountain
If investigators recover the second black box, the public will still wait many months for answers. “The industry does not like to be a talking head and risk coming to unfair conclusions on either behalf of the aircraft or the crew,” Baier says. “We ought to learn from history.
The China Eastern plane that crashed was not the 737 Max but a Boeing 737, “one of the safest aircraft out there,” says Baier. “There are over 5,000 of them in operation. I think they’ve got almost 1,200 in operation in China. It's incredibly safe.” If the second black box is never recovered, the investigative authorities will have to do what they did before flight recorders became mandatory in the 1960s. “They would try to rebuild the aircraft. That's how accidents used to be investigated,” says Baier. “It would not mean all hope is lost on getting an answer to what happened. But then we’re not talking months, we’re talking years based on the kind of impact and how scattered the debris is.
The crash investigation is being led by the Civil Aviation Administration of China . “They're a fairly sophisticated authority,” says Baier. “They have a pretty safe airspace. Before this week, the last time they had an accident was 10 years ago.” The Federal Aviation Authority has said it “is ready to assist in investigation efforts if asked,” according to a statement. If Chinese authorities request assistance, the U.S. would send the NTSB.Baier says he wouldn’t read anything positive or negative into the CAAC’s decision to run the investigation without U.S. assistance, noting that the American agencies may well be invited later on.
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