igs942
Even if the exact position was known where the engines ran out of fuel, the aircraft could still have glided for over 100 miles in any direction. So pi times the radius squared gives a search area of 3.14 times 10000 = 31,400 square miles as a minimum.
Because of the depth of water, a towed sonar array would be needed to pick up debris on the sea floor and the maximum speed would be in the region of 5 knots. Perhaps you could survey as much as 250 square miles a day with side scan sonar. It would still need 125 days just to totally cover this relatively small area. It could be many years before any wreckage is discovered on the sea bed.
Last edited by G0ULI; 1st Apr 2014 at 16:36.
Reason: Finger trouble