Currents and debris NE of LKP
Failure to so far locate F-GZCP to the N, NE, NW, W and SW of LKP prompted me to revisit information on the currents and surface debris locations.
I'm well aware of mm43's analysis suggesting a location SW of LKP, relatively close to the area resulting of Meteo France's reverse-drift analysis, and until recently reinforced by the French Navy supposed pinger data.
A SW of LKP location is of course still not to be excluded, but one should beware of tunnel-thinking. Although BEA's recent stance that F-GZCP "has never been south of LKP" may equally be qualified as such, please consider the following:
Unless there was an immediate catastrophic event @ 0210 (other than iced pitots) there is little reason to assume that F-GZCP would be instantly that much off course that it could within 4 minutes end up at a location that would require (significantly) more than a 90° turn. To maintain heading would normally be a priority for a crew dealing with a series of events as it was confronted with according to the ACARS messages.
And if weather ahead would have required a change of course under those circumstances, it would make sense to turn the least possible. Given the N/NE course of F-GZCP, that would imply a turn to E rather to W.
Not only have two US reverse drift analyses suggested an impact point to the NE and NE/E of LKP respectively, also data of the Mercator model (used by Meteo France) do not exclude that.
I'm not privy to all data available to Meteo France used for their reverse drift calcs, but the Mercator based graphs I got hold of show that although on 27 May (closest I could get to 1 June) the prevalent current NE of LKP was E/NE, on 2 June the current was W/NW, while turning N on 9 June. US model based data are even more clear on a prevalent W/NW current.
Taken together this would IMHO not rule out that F-GZCP after its LKP initially pursued along its heading followed by a (relatively shallow/controlled) turn right and possibly ended up fairly E/NE near the 40nm search perimeter. We know that this area wasn't covered that well initially and certainly has not been covered recently.
Such an E/NE point of impact could also better explain the three debris items found in that area (see map page 37 of BEA's 1st interim report). Strangely enough these three debris items do not figure in the 1st interim report's annex 4 where a day by day location of the finds is given. So, unfortunately it is impossible to say when they were found and, equally important, what they are (in terms of how high or low they would float).
Dutch