Greatest aviation mystery enters 35th day.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: The last hope for the families of the 239 passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to get some closure on one of the great aviation mysteries of all time lies with the acoustic pingers that ships and planes are trying desperately to track in the Indian Ocean. Those pingers, the beeps of which are getting fainter with each passing day the plane is not located, is made by a company located in Sarasota, Florida, run by an Indian American, Anish Patel.
Patel has been running the Radiant Power Corp. and Dukane-Seacom, Inc. for more than three years, since 2010. The pingers on the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane were manufactured by Dukane-Seacom. Radiant specializes in cabin and back-up power suppliers for commercial planes.
In interviews to CNN, Patel said the pingers are required to operate for a minimum of 30 days. To ensure that requirement, manufacturers install batteries that can last several days longer. Patel predicted that his pingers could work for 33 to 35 days, or perhaps 40 days, at full strength. The pinger sound, which is inaudible to human ears, does not stop immediately after it surpasses its full-strength design life, but fades over time. It has a water-activated switch which releases an ultrasonic signal when in contact with moisture.
Today is day 35 since the plane went missing.
The pinger will continue to emit signals with “progressively lower output levels until the unit shuts down,” Patel said to CNN.
Dukane-Seacom pingers have played a role in several aviation investigations, including TWA 800, Swiss Air 111 and Air France 447. In the Air France crash, a pinger detector was unable to find the pinger, and it took two years for searchers to find the wreckage.
According to the Herald-Tribune, Patel has spent the past several days reviewing data with searchers, running tests and helping regulators around the world seek the plane’s so called “black box” — where clues to its disappearance may rest.
“They asked us to review everything and make sure their findings were in line with what we would expect from one of our beacons,” Patel said to the Herald-Tribune. “They have a pretty good fix on it now.”
The report said Dukane-Seacom makes about 100 emergency beacons every day, just like the one now sunk as deep as three miles below the surface. But the locator clinging to the tail of Flight 370 was manufactured eight years ago out of the company’s operation in Chicago.
The technology can work on a plane for up to six years before it is either overhauled with new batteries or replaced. That update was never performed by Dukane Seacom on the device in the missing Malaysia Airlines jet — maintenance the commercial carrier is typically responsible for monitoring, Patel told CNN and Herald-Tribune.
“We’re just happy to be a small part in bringing some closure to this whole incident,” Patel told the Herald-Tribune.
According to his LinkedIn profile, prior to starting his business, Patel previously worked at CIRCOR Aerospace for more than three years. He has also worked at Honeywell Aerospace and Eaton Aerospace. Patel graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1992.