swiss air flight 1100 had krooshed in 1998 off the coast of nova scotia. those were both in waters shallower than the indian ocean. but they can go as deep as 20,000 feet, but the deeper the recovery, the slower the process. it takes about 1,000 an hour for every thousand feet you that need to descend. so if you re going to 11,000 feet, you can count on 11 hours to get down. reporter: at 0 those depth it s pitch black, so the underwater vehicles are equipped with lights and cameras. they re also outfitted with sonar to scout for debris. they are steered by two operators on board the ship above who use instant feedback from the salvage vehicle cameras to direct robotic arms. they can hover, they can move left, right, forward and back.
far apart these frontcoum the ce ships. we have to wait and see. simon i think you used the word a moment ago that you would be astounded if indeed this ping is from one of the black boxes because the odds are stacked against all of these crews that are searching having no sight of debris. because the depth of the water, the terrain there below the water, and all of that can get in the way of sending out a signal that s only detectable at what, one or two nautical miles? yeah, at most. bear in mind, that the terrain is between 10,000 and 15,000 feet deep. so it s different than the terrain they were looking at, say, ten days ago. it s a much more complex terrain, much deeper in parts. so they ve got to be right on top of it. the chinese ship is likely to
having there with the ocean shield if they can get closer they can get away from the surface and also distinguish it from other equipment, other ocean noises and the noise from the actual transponder on the black box. so my guess is, if this information is as it says it is when if they can get one of those two ships much closer to the location of the chinese ship, they may have stumbled across the black box. but as you said, they ve got to be pretty much on top of it. and the chances of that are phenomenally slim but they might. so i have a tweet here from john. and i thought about it when you said they haven t even found any debris. they haven t definitively found any debris. he had tweeted is it possible that the flight landed perfectly on top of the water, sully style, as it s now being called, thus says you have no debris?
how plausible is that? given the sea conditions in this area, you know, whether that plane landed safely on the water, it was flat calm. we know when the plane went down in the southern indian ocean, it wasn t flat calm. it s likely to be an uncontrolled landing. the probability is it would have broke up on landing. why isn t there debris in the area? that debris can move quite a distance and we know that debris can disperse through many different directions. along with that, saturated and sink away with air pockets trapping the air, making, say, wing sections or whatever will the low, with the storms they ve had over the last few weeks that would tend to knock the air out of it. so any surface debris will disfuse and disperse.
curious findings. no smoking gun, though. the simulator is what you might expect a professional pilot to use. we don t know how unusual it is. how curious is it. all of this comes four weeks to the day after the plane has vanished and adds to the mystery. specifically focused on 150-mile tract in the zone. officials are using that high-tech equipment with luck hopefully will help them find debris. cnn s jim clancy is live in kuala lumpur. what comes out to me, today no announcement of any lead, no major satellite images. just new ministerial committees. what stands out to you? what stands out to me is we re going through bureaucracy of this information. we re talking about an independent panel which would