As it has been now confirmed that the Malaysia Airline passenger jet crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, the most important task for investigators is to locate the plane's black box.
Black box, which is an aviation technology, is crucial in the hunt for the wreckage, as it is the only way to solve the mystery of how and why the ill-fated Flight MH370 went down.
Although, the black box is capable of sending 'pings' or signals for at least 30 days following a crash, it could go on for another 15 days depending upon the strength of the battery at the time of the crash, news.com.au reports.
Former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, John Goglia said that it was a race to get to the area in time to catch the black box pinger while it's still working.
The report said that in order to catch the signal, searchers would be putting to use a high-tech listening device, Towed Pinger Locator, loaned by the US Navy, which is a 30-inch-long cylindrical microphone that's slowly towed underwater in a grid pattern behind a commercial ship.
Apart from the microphone device, Australian authorities would also be sending a navy support vessel, which is equipped with acoustic detection equipment that would listen for pings.
The report said that if no pings are caught with the microphone device and the navy vessel, then the searchers would have to use side-scan sonar via devices that send sounds to the sea's depths and analyse the echo return to map the ocean floor.
When the Air France Flight 447 went down in 2009 in the Atlantic, it took more than 40 million dollars, four lengthy searches and nearly two years before the plane and the black boxes were found, the report added.