Originally Posted by
onetrack
Those calculations, of course, are the ones where the greatest doubt exists - as to aircraft height, speed and throttle settings - and where extrapolated figures have been used.
There are some pretty detailed PDF files available showing how they chose the current search area, and the methods look pretty good. It's not just 'well, we guessed it was flying straight and level at normal cruise speed and altitude', but 'we tested a vast number of possible routes with randomly varying altitude, speed and direction along the route, and these ones best matched the satellite signals'.
So we can be pretty sure the final 'ping' was in this search area.
The problem is that we have no information about what happened after that 'ping'. If someone was still at the controls and glided as far as possible, it's going to be outside the current search area. If it spiralled into the sea, it should be inside the search area