Originally Posted by
Capn Bloggs
A Squared, before you go off half-cocked, have a look where the Straits of Malacca are: miles away from the current search position and on the other side of Peninsula Malaysia.
Yes. I've flown over the Straits of Malacca, I know where they are. If one assumes that the airplane had some sort of accidental catastrophe, then true, the straits of Malacca are very improbable. Thing is, we don't know that it *was* an in flight disintegration/uncontrolled descent/etc and we don't know that it *wasn't* a commandeering/ hijacking. If you do not assume those are not possibilities, then the straits of Malacca stop being an impossibility. I've been involved in search and rescue, and you don't only search in places you think are probable, although you give them extra effort. Ideally you search everyplace that is physically possible for the plane to be locate, although that can be a really big area so you try to reduce that as much as possible. But, yeah, you do send assets to search areas with a lower probability, rather than concentrating all assets in the area you think is most probable, given your assumptions. It's pretty obvious that a hijacking scenario hasn't been absolutely ruled out, so the possible ares that it could be are a little more widespread than "directly downwind from the last point of contact".
Besides, it looks like nobody really knows whose P-3s they are or what they're doing.
edit: I see a later posts suggest that they are US P-3s searching for MH370.