something? i think it s going to be day z because right now all of the sea assets are primarily north. so it s going to take quite a while. plus sea state is going to dictate a lot of that along with the general weather because of it being really you re talking nine-foot seas right now. that makes it real difficult to go fast. they re going to it could be a very long process as far as number of days before they get there. i think, greg, the question might be, based on what you re also suggesting about having the ability for sonar and basically listening devices, it may require, if i m listening to you correctly, that a naval submarine be in the area. the movement of u.s. navy submarines is a classified piece of information.
time for longer haul flights will be increased after this crash. well, you know, alex, that s a speculation that we really need we need to go a long way before we start talking about the duration of recorders. the bottom line is if you have two hour was recording and no human voices, then you reach certain consequences. we have to remember, though, that this aircraft was headed to the northeast when the communications were discontinued by both the acars and the radio communication. it was headed northeast. and now we re looking at an aircraft that is southerly. and i think greg is exactly right. the consequences of an on-board debilitating fire would negate the possibility of them being incapacitated that way. so either they were intentionally flying it down there, or somebody was intelligenceally flying it down there, or something happened at some point in time to
several days after the accident occurs where we have data and because we didn t have that, we really have just been jumping from one potential bit of speculation to another. we lost that window, even if the so-called black boxes aren t found, air france took two years, the wing can float and greg can correct me if i m wrong, ats least for longer than other parts of the aircraft can. any piece they can look at and begin to put something together to help solve the puzzle. greg, you want to react to that? sure, michael brings up a good point, if the air has gone into the water. if somebody tried to ditch this airplane at night, it would have to be a controlled crash without depth perception and being able to see visually how closure getting to the sea surface, you won t be able to make a smooth landing like the miracle on the hudson. if you remember air france 447, they found a large section of the tail with the logo on it and a lot of floating debris.
fairly close to the black box for them to even to pick up these sounds. so i think one thing that s important to remember is whether or not let s assume for the moment that this might be the case that this is debris from the plane. the debris alone can be extremely helpful in terms of understanding what happened and what caused this calamity. and that is true regardless of whether or not the black box is found. important to find it, yes, but not the only clue that investigators will have. tom costello who has been following this from the very beginning and sarah james, thank you so much for that reporting. and joining me now is msnbc aviation expert greg fife and michael goldfarb. greg, i want to start with you. you heard tom talk about the
yesterday where relatives were in tears here. now they had this meeting and told us as a result of this meeting that they are not planning to go to australia, reflecting really what greg and michael were saying in terms of caution. they were told at this meeting they don t yet know what this is. they may know they were told in the next day or two more information and they will be informed of that. there are though, kristen complaints from the families we ve been speaking to here about what happened at the meeting. they feel as if they are just being told the same thing as they ve been told previous meetings, no new information. talk about radar and that kind of thing but not really the kind of updates they are hoping for, perhaps because quite simply the authorities don t have that kind of information. and at the same time, kristen, this will i guess leave you speechless, one thing we re hearing from the meeting is that they were asked to fill in forms to tell the authorities if they