Originally Posted by
jcjeant
Hi,
It's not that assumption you wait from professionals.
What do you want then ? Guesswork ?
Some assumptions have to be made or you have an unfeasibly large search area. ACARS can fail too - and that is our only source of LKP. Suppose the a/c lost all power and glided from LKP - it could have been many miles from all the search areas.
The assumptions were (to me) reasonable at every stage, the area searched in phase 1&2 included the crash site - and failed to find the wreckage, but not because of looking in the wrong place.
Phase 3 was specifically targeted based on drift analysis of the floating wreckage.
Phase 4 went back with no assumptions except that the crash was in the vicinity of LKP (ie. no power loss and glide etc.), and no assumption that earlier searches were correct.
They know that pingers can fail ... or be destructed for any reasons
In theory yes, but historically they almost always work, and there are two independent that would have to fail. It was a reasonable assumption for the first two phases, after that it was not assumed.