Where we are now
RE: Coagie, I won't address your personal attacks.
Are you sure that you understand what I meant by obfuscate?
I am in agreement with the way this forum has been moderated. I have no complaints about the redundant and off topic posts being removed. I've read most of them, there's no loss in the ones I've seen removed. This forum is for discussing the disappearance of MH370; IMO anything not germane to that discussion should be removed, including redundant posts.
I think that the stage we are now at will be seen as the "looking for a debris field" portion of the effort locate the wreckage. There are specialized vessels who are best used in their design mode, searching the bottom, but the search effort almost certainly must find a debris field first; anything from a 777 would make it possible to make a logical prediction for the likely location of the source, and from there a search with some possibility of success can be mounted for the location of the bulk of the wreck. The ping seems to me to be a long shot.
If the plane broke up on impact, as likely, there will be floating debris. It's unlikely that there will be significant radar reflections from the small pieces that are most likely to turn up.
Spotting anything real soon is unlikely, there is a lot of clutter in those waters and the weather is deteriorating. It would be hard to overestimate how difficult it must be to to spot a (probability off white or black) piece of floating debris among the whitecaps that are the norm there. Even if the short term fails to turn up anything, assuming that the aircraft broke up on impact, the debris, or remnants of it will almost certainly turn up somewhere, maybe next year on the Zealand's West Coast. But stuff will turn up someday somewhere if the aircraft broke up on impact.
Last edited by Propduffer; 24th Mar 2014 at 07:42.