Demo
    Two men work together to recover a cylindrical object from water, wearing protective clothing and gear. One is kneeling, the other standing, on a wet surface with water and grassy land in the background.
    Investigators recover the flight data recorder of Atlas Air Flight 3591, a Boeing 767-300 cargo jet that crashed in marshland near Houston in February.
    Close-up of a person holding a flight data recorder, partially covered in dirt with text that reads
    This flight data recorder was recovered from the crash site of West Air Sweden Flight 294, a Bombardier CRJ200 that went down in Sweden in 2016. Despite the heavy damage, data was was retrieved.
    A person wearing purple gloves handles computer hardware, including a motherboard and RAM modules, in a laboratory or technical setting.
    Memory boards from the cockpit voice recorder of Atlas Air Flight 3591, which crashed in February near Houston.
    Table listing notable airplane crashes with details including aircraft type, location, date, and whether flight data and cockpit voice recorders were recovered.
    In one sense, MH370 was not unique — 15 times over the decades a plane has crashed into a body of water and one or more of the black boxes were never recovered.