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Is it time to give up?
By David at 06/07/2010 - 03:02
Is it time to give up?
228 people died aboard an Air France crash just over a year ago, June 1, 2009. Black boxes from the airplane were never recovered. An association representing families of some of those who died are continuing to urge the French government to search for remaining plane wreckage, even though the most recent searches -- ending just last week – were completely unsuccessful.
According to the NY Times: “’We absolutely have to find that plane and its black boxes,” said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, president of Entraide et Solidarité AF447, a group representing relatives of French victims of the crash. “This is not only of importance to the families, but for everyone. For the sake of aviation safety, we need to find out what happened in those final 14 minutes to know if something can be done to prevent this from happening again.’” www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/world/europe/26france.html
But at what point does one have to accept that we may never know what caused it – even if those black boxes are recovered. Or that that knowledge may prevent one kind of accident, but accidents will continue to occur.
More useful at this point might be to press for changes in the standards for black boxes. Last December, experts investigating the crash formally recommended that the black boxes be upgraded to emit signals for 90 days, rather than the 30 days presently required.
What do you think?Do we ever give up on this or similar disasters, man-made or natural?