Bloomberg News reports today that the search for Air France Flight 447 black boxes has been called off as the leases for the robot submarines being used had run out.
The report also said that 200 square miles of seabed that is now considered the most likely resting place for the black boxes will, at least for the moment, remain unexplored.
As you may remember, earlier this month, the search was shifted some 40 miles away based on a re-analysis of previously made sonar recordings using newly developed Thales software. However, after a week of searching 80 square miles in the new location, no wreckage of Flight 447 was found.
This marks the third failed attempt to find Flight 447's black boxes.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.
