Originally Posted by
Golf-Mike-Mike
Thanks Nigel, wouldn't it be the case though that they need to search at both the likely impact point (for the FDR and larger chunks of sunken debris), as well as the latest search zone for floating debris?
There is no point in aircraft searching for the crash point as they cannot see a sunken fuselage. I would expect that the towed sonar array will be dragged to where the impact point is expected to be as that will need to get searching where the DFDR/CVR ULBs may be making their last signals.
So there are in fact two different searches: a surface search to confirm the crash point and a subsurface search to find the ULBs before they go quiet. The surface search provides information that should narrow down the subsurface search.