"Pollution spot"
It is highly interesting to note that the Drift Group puts the back tracked position of the pollution spot picked up by COSMO Skymed1 right under AF447's flight path, approx. 10 nm (1 minute of flight) S/SW of LKP. If the pollution spot were indeed to be kerosene, it seems that the Drift Group assumes that AF447 must have lost that in flight, "be it voluntarily (fuel dump?) or not". The Drift Group's logic is based on BEA's assumption that AF447 hit the ocean in tact and that the drift models deployed point the wreckage area all well north of LKP. Remember also BEA's earlier statement that "AF447 has never been south of LKP".
The Drift Group report contains two further intriguing statements, which with hindsight (since in the original search area nothing was found) may point to a wreckage location near the 40nm perimeter of LKP, to the NE of LKP (see also my post # 1383):
One statement is on page 102, under the final remarks of the report: [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]"It is possible we have underestimated the wind drag on human bodies. If so, this would push the wreckage area towards the northeast, closer to Ursulla sighting and to the original flight track."
The second statement is on page 101, under the objective discussion of the different models, where for the INNOMC models it is stated that: "If we add the Stokes drift contribution the crash point is now found outside the 95% confidence rectangle, slightly east of the Ursulla sighting (at 42 nm from LKP, not shown on the Figure). We have excluded this last possibility."
Best,
Dutch
P.S. In my post # 1383 I referred to the overview map of retrieved items on page 37 of the 1st BEA interim report. In the French version there are three items depicted east of LKP; in the English version (same page) there is no trace of those items.