Jeff, my feeling based on the drift was that there was a deviation to the west of the track. I have always felt, based on the search grids June 2-5, if there was a deviation to the east of the track, the search would have discovered the debris a lot sooner. I won't speak for takata as to whether he eventually abandoned his idea that the plane did a 180 or attempted to.
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I am both a bit surprised and a bit disconcerted that there is no news of the sonar having picked up any targets worthy of investigation by the mini-subs. The sonar sweeps probably have covered nearly half of the area they intended to sweep at this point, and one would expect they would start with the area they thought the plane most likely impacted the sea. If that is the case, they would now be moving the grids significantly greater distances to the north of the last reported position, and west of the track. Even if the boxes are never retrieved, the impact point can be critical to several theories for how and when the plane came to fall into the sea.