Given the new information and the resulting huge search area it strikes me that it has become much more likely that the plane and passengers are never going to be found, that we may never know why, of even what happened. What does the end game look like for this SAR effort? When will enough be enough? How long does it go on?
I ask such questions seriously. We are in unprecedented territory. Far from the search area being narrowed, which is typical, it has been dramatically expanded. From from knowing that the plane crashed...we do not even have any evidence of that. This is...to be blunt...extraordinary. It is one thing for Amelia's Earhart's little plane to go missing many decades ago and never be found. What are we going to do if this modern jetliner is never found? That's the worst case scenario now...not a hijacking...not a bomb...not a crash. The worst case scenario is that we never know.
