over the years and have unlocked a whole lot of mysteries. however as 360 s randi kaye found out, they do have limitations. reporter: this is the sound of a pilot in trouble. swissair one-11, we have to land immediate. reporter: that was the pilot of swiss air flight 111 minutes before he crashed into the atlantic ocean in 1988. everyone on board was killed. when crash investigators found the plane s black boxes at the bottom of the ocean, they looked intact, so they were stunned to learn this. both the recorders stopped recording about six minutes before the aircraft actually hit the water. reporter: leaving investigators to wonder why they suddenly lost control of the plane. it was a fire they later found in the jet s entertainment system, but it took putting the plane back together, all 2 million pieces of it, back
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.
happening. we have seen that before, certainly, with the swiss air flight many years ago. andrew, what about the protocols in this case? i mean, do you get the sense that this whole operation, is i don t know, being put together by piecemeal? were there protocol in place with how to deal want emergency like this? well, there are, but we need to remember the scope of the system as well. in the two weeks since that flight went missing, there s been 650,000 commercial flights that have taken off and landed and delivered 50 million passengers around the world to their final destination. and these are anomalies. the fact that this plane itself has gone missing and we re talking about it at great length speaks, i think, to the fact that the system operates 24/7/365 with near perfection. and, therefore, we can train, we can prepare, we can deploy people in the event of an incident but these are still very, very rare.
follow me @andersoncooper. next intensifying focus off australia. we re going to hear from a commander in the u.s. navy s seventh fleet which has planes and vessels in the area. later we ll dig deeper into the possibility of a fire on board and parralels to the crash of swiss air flight 15 years ago. what can we learn from that flight that might be applicable to this. we ll be right back. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money? uhhh. no, that can t happen. that s the thing, you don t know how long it has to last. everyone has retirement questions. so ameriprise created the exclusive.. confident retirement approach. now you and your ameripise advisor can get the real answers you need. well, knowing gives you confidence.
two of his colleagues will join us. we ll run through all the evolving scenarios investigators are looking at now, including some you ve been tweeting us about. tweet us using #ac360. follow me @andersoncooper. next intensifying focus off australia. we re going to hear from a commander in the u.s. navy s seventh fleet which has planes and vessels in the area. later we ll dig deeper into the possibility of a fire on board and parallels to the crash of swiss air flight 15 years ago. what can we learn from that flight that might be applicable to this? we ll be right back. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money? uhhh. no, that can t happen. that s the thing, you don t know how long it has to last.