That's interesting. I wonder why the Chinese waited until now to offer their ship? After all, it's close on 2 yrs now since MH370 vanished, and surely the Chinese are not that short of shipping, that it has taken them 2 yrs to find an available spare ship?
I get the impression that the ATSB are not going to extend the search area, and they seem quite firm on this.
All that the Chinese ship will do, I would imagine, is speed up the conclusion of the search - which was planned for June this year, as I understand.
The CSIRO drift analysis for MH370 is obviously guiding the ATSB search effort, since not long after the flaperon was found.
Under the heading "Forward drift from other segments of the 7th arc", the CSIRO seems assured that the washing up of the flaperon on Reunion is inconsistent with a more Northerly crash site - and they are virtually confirming that the current Southerly search zone is the area of the most likely origin of the flaperon.
In the conclusion, they state the region between 32 deg S and 39 deg S is the area of greatest probability of the crash site.
However, all of their drift modelling still shows that at least
some floating wreckage, from a crash site located between 32 and 39 deg S, should have been visible to the aerial searchers, in the SIO areas covered between 17th March 2014, to later in that year.
The fact that no floating wreckage was ever found by any aerial or sea searcher is the most confounding part of the whole story (particularly when you see the size and amount of search effort put in) - and it leads to simple suspicions that any floating wreckage was outside the aerial and sea search areas covered between mid-March 2014 to mid-year 2014 - and that this possibility should be a consideration in any modelling or further computations.
MH370 - CSIRO drift analysis