CHICAGO (CBS) ― For the first time, the public is seeing images of the actual crash site of Air France Flight 447, which went down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil.

Military planes have located a 23-foot section from the jet, along with other plane debris. But the plane's electronic black box, still not recovered, is crucial to discovering exactly what happened on board.

"To find out whether this was a security breech or terrorist attack, or a safety of flight issue can only be answered by recovery of the black boxes," said former National Transportation Safety Board Director Jim Hall.

The search involves hundreds of people and is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars. But CBS 2's Derrick Blakley reports simple technology would have made the search for the downed plane much easier, if world aviation learned the lesson of Sept. 11.

The black boxes from jets that brought down the Twin Towers were never located. That's when critics like Hall began to call for detachable black boxes, a recording device that can float, and that's equipped with GPS technology.

"Within minutes of that accident, it would have been broadcasting a signal of longitude and latitude to the nearest satellite in the sky which would have enabled a very quick rescue or recovery," Hall said.

The black box currently in use sends out an audio homing signal, but it could be 2.5 miles down, at the bottom of the Atlantic, and the Brazilian navy doesn't have the specialized equipment needed to search there.

"The ocean is awfully deep where the plane went down and we've got a limited time frame. The pings on the black boxes give out after 30 days," said former NTSB official Peter Goelz.

The new technology is already being used aboard F-18 fighter jets, the kind flown by the Blue Angels. It would cost money to put it into commercial planes, but after a tragedy, it could save both money and lives.

"We saw the need after 9/11. This accident off the coast of Brazil puts an exclamation point on that need," Hall said.

The Air France jet was flying through violent storms with 100-mile-an-hour winds, before sending an automatic signal that it was losing power.

But the airline also confirmed that four days earlier, it received a phoned-in bomb threat about a flight from Buenos Aires, to Paris.

After a search, that flight was completed without incident. Still, that threat raises more questions about foul play, that only the black box may be able to answer.
 

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)