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MH370 families say they 'will never give up searching'

Families of the 239 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are marking the first anniversary of the plane's disappearance with a vow to never give up on the search for answers to the world's biggest aviation mystery.

On Sunday an interim report into the missing plane revealed that the plane's underwater locator beacon battery had expired a year before it disappeared.

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British pilots call for 'virtual black box' on MH370 anniversary

British pilots are calling for technical improvements so the site and possible cause of a crash can be identified more quickly, a year after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Despite extensive searches, no trace of the aircraft, thought to be in the southern Indian Ocean, has been found. Pilots' organisation Balpa wants more technical aircraft data to be transmitted to a "virtual black box" when a flight experiences problems.

British pilots call for 'virtual black box' on MH370 anniversary Credit: Reuters

Balpa says aircraft should be modified to send a burst of vital technical data from the cockpit as soon as aircraft behaves outside normal flight patterns. This information would be saved virtually and used to locate the aircraft and provide an early indication of what has taken place, pending a full investigation using the black box cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder once retrieved from the aircraft.

Being able to locate a crashed aircraft, understand what has gone wrong and stop it happening again is vital to making every flight safe.

With the right safeguards against misuse in place, pilots want more cockpit information to be transmitted when a flight gets into trouble and stored in a 'virtual black box'. This would help to minimise the unacceptable anguish suffered by the families of the passengers and crew while they wait for information.

– Jim McAuslan, Balpa general secretary

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