be 20,000 feet or higher to be visible by radar. when the les, when the black boxes, the data recorder et cetera are found and the cockpit voice recorder are found. it could take years, it could happen this week. but when it happens, what is the single most critical information we can glean from that? i would start with altitude. what the variance was between the time that altitude was requested and then we lost contact with them when that request was denied. or they were given that clearance to 34,000 feet. altitude would certainly tell a lot. there s thousands of parameters as we know in that digital data recorder that s going to give acceleration flight control movement, so on and so forth. after air france 447, it took two years. let s home they are able to recover it sooner. i know they are working hard. jeff les, thank you for being on the program. i appreciate. we ve been asking for your questions and keep sending your
a the ability to float, a boat if you will for a little while. you re a commercial airline pilot. yes, it happened here on the hudson river, the miracle on the hudson. is it possible in the java sea with those weather conditions? of course it s possible but not likely with the success that captain sullenberger had. the ditch switch what it really does primarily is it closes the outflow valves which are responsible for pressurization they open and close according to pressure. and actually captain sullenberger did not and jeff skiles did not close that switch. they beat themselves up over that. they still managed it. but the airplane, you know was in such a stable condition that it managed to float for a while. but in the seas that were indicated at the time i don t see that likely poppy. les les, thank you. jeff to you, let me ask you this, an emergency exit door and an inflateable slide were among some of the first items of debris that have been found.
kind of information. and, jeff so much talk around mh-370 when it disappeared was the race against time because of the pings, right? and the pinger locator and the batteries run out after i think 30 days. is there a race against time here for that? i wouldn t expect there to be. it s funny, we haven t heard much about pingers. at all. that s one of the pieces missing, yeah and i don t know why. it might have to do with the weather. the forecast that i saw for the area is we ve got two good days of weather ahead of us and so they should be telling us i think the surface search is mostly for the recovery of remains i think for the loved ones. as time goes by that debris becomes less useful from a forensic point of view trying to locate the underwater material which stays put near where it entered the water presumably. that s what we really want. that s the stuff that s where the black box will be. that s where the answers are going to be found. and, yes, the way you find that
we ve discussed military airplanes have a deployment system where they where the elt, the emergency locator transmitter, physically comes out of the airplane and they can find it floating. but at this point commercial aircraft don t have that system. and, jeff, this question comes from chaz tweeted us is it possible the plane made a safe landing on the sea but was taken away by a wave the emergency door was opened, right? they are talking about the emergency door was found and the slide was found. we were talking about it in the last segment. possible? we were talking about it during the break, the idea that the plane ditches, sullenberger-style miracle on the hudson there s some evidence that maybe not everybody accepts is fully valid at this point, but there s been some information leaked from air traffic control that suggests if this is true that the plane climbed steeply, lost speed, and then subsequently very soon after went into a steep dive and that would suggest being out
now, these black box pingers don t always work. they didn t work in the case of air france 447. it took two years. and that s why it took two years. yeah. we can t assume that they work but you should be listening. so yes, 30 days is the lifespan of these the batteries, the power of the batteries. got about three weeks left. should be plenty of time. it can t be very far. jeff les, good to have you on. thank you for being here. thank you for joining me. i m poppy harlow in new york. coming up a reported sighting of a tornado in mississippi. a lot of treacherous weather around the country. we ll talk about that. more in-depth coverage of this continuing coverage of search 8501. another hour of cnn newsroom starts after a break.