are the ones that are really looking for answers at this hour. all right. some heartbreaking images of those loved ones getting the news. let s bring in ian, and david, also the author of the book malaysia airlines flight 370. so now the egyptian authorities are saying they do not believe there was in kind of terrorist activity. it was likely there was a technical failure. how they find what that technical failure was. well, fred, because they have the black box already and the black box we re referring to is the flight data recorder. not the cockpit voice recorder in the front of the aircraft. they haven t recovered that. that ll give them more clues. as far as the technical aspect, it could be the reason that they re saying this because they got some information off of the
card actually surviving that kind of impact? have you seen that before in other crashes? yes. oh, yes. i have. i have cases where i have cell phone video and some cases, it s crucial. in one case, it was really a key piece of evidence. i ve had cases where you ve gotten pictures off of cameras, information off of a laptop. it s amazing what can survive and in a couple of those crashes, it was a horrific fire and still survived. these things survived and there should be more. i would think they would be finding more but you really have to comb these crash sites and sometimes, you literally get down to sifting with screens. so it s just a matter of finding it and if they find them, i think they ll get more. mary schiavo, thank you very much. and justin green, you as well. digging deeper on the technology that might save lives in a situation like this one. rene marsh has that. pull, up. reporter: despite glaring cockpit alarms like these, andreas lubitz continued
kind of impact? have you seen that before in other crashes? yes. oh yes. i have. i have cases where i have cell phone video and some cases, it s crucial. in one case it was really a key piece of evidence. i ve had cases where you ve gotten pictures off of cameras, information off of a laptop. it s amazing what can survive and in a couple of those crashes, it was a horrific fire and still survived. these things survived and there should be more. i would think they would be finding more but you really have to comb these crash sites and sometimes, you literally get down to sifting with screens. so it s just a matter of finding it and if they find them i think they ll get more. mary schiavo, thank you very much. and justin green, you as well. digging deeper on the technology that might save lives in a situation like this one. rene marsh has that. pull up. reporter: despite glaring cockpit alarms like these,
recorders are analyzed. this is our audio library, especially designed screen room that are shielded from outside signals and as well it s got very good sound proofing. reporter: inside the safety bureau laboratory in australia. there are few countries in the world who have the technical know-how to work out what s inside one of these things. and this lab is one of those places. boxes from other investigations torn apart, burned damaged in many ways, suggest a tough assignment. but here they say the story of what happened is usually found. a lot of our work is with undamaged recorders and it s very easy to download them. reporter: even with damaged ones your success rate of getting the information off is good? yes we ve been able to
we know investigators will be focusing on. absolutely. the other issue is, we know that the black boxes have been handed over to malaysia. we don t know if they have been tampered with or not. how can one tamper with a black box, david, and what kind of damage can be done? well, there s really really you d have to have very sophisticated equipment which only a few places in the world have to be able to take the equipment take the information off, modify it, put it back on when you re talking about tampering. what they could do is blanket out. they could get rid of any information on it and that would be incredibly suspect. the critical peace of information from the black boxes, however, is the altitude of the aircraft when the missile hit it. if you have that and you can look at the damage to the outside of the aircraft and where the penetration was and where it came out on the other side, could you definitely tell which direction the missile came from for this to substantiat