US Navy captain pessimistic over MH370 black box recovery

US Navy officer Captain Mark Matthews, now in-charge of leading the missing Malaysia Airline search team has reportedly said that the chances of finding the jet's black box flight recorder are simply 'untenable.

Matthews made the comment as the Royal Australian Navy vessel Ocean Shield was being loaded with a "pinger" locator and an underwater drone, essential tools for kick starting the search for the black box.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, ADV Ocean Shield will not arrive in the 319,000 square kilometer search area for three to four days, while the beacon on the black box could have only four days of battery power left.

Captain Matthews said that it all depends on how effective we are at reducing the search area, adding that right now, the search area is basically the size of the Indian Ocean, which is an untenable amount of time to search.

While the black box's beacon is able to operate for not more than 45 days, Matthews said that even if debris of the plane is found, the Ocean Shield crew would have to wait before deploying the pinger locator until oceanographers located the exact point where the plane actually crashed.