Manufacturer of Air France “Black Box” has 100 Percent Recovery Record – Paolo Carmassi, the president of Honeywell Aerospace, the company that built the “black box” aboard Air France Flight 447, says his firm has a 100 percent recovery record from air accidents. He hopes that despite the fears that the boxes are lost at the bottom of the ocean; their record of successful recovery will be maintained.

A French submarine is trying to locate the flight data recorder by tracing the underwater locator beacon which emits “pings” for up to 30 days. And the US has two high-tech “towed pinger locators” which can search to a depth of 20,000 feet, attached to French tug boars.

The “black box” weighs about 13 pounds and is actually an orange cylinder designed to survive strong impacts, high temperatures and lots of pressure. It records every detail of a plane’s operation and have played a critical role in investigations of air accidents since they were installed in commercial aircrafts in the 1940s.

Carmassi said, “We believe that our technology is well positioned to, in this case, contribute to solving the big question around this particular accident.” However, Carmassi admitted that it was difficult to estimate the battery life of the beacon based on environmental conditions.