While searchers scour the Atlantic Ocean for Flight 447’s black box, Clive Irving explains how aviation came to depend on this idiosyncratic recording method—and why the Air France debacle proves we need to give it up.
France’s chief of air accident investigations, Paul-Louis Arslanian, held aloft a cylinder the size of a small flashlight. Sounding exasperated, he said, “This is what we are trying to find… in the Atlantic.”
