lowbank wrote:SonOfABeech wrote:enilria wrote:Good luck on that. Amazing with all our technology we can't find every piece of metal in the ocean bigger than 3 by 3 meters.
Well, it is a big ocean, and the plane is in a remote part of it.
Do they have any new leads?
Well they know where it certainly isn't.
I don't think it's entirely out of the question that it could actually be in the area already searched, just very unlikely. The ocean is so big compared to the range of the tools used for searching the seafloor, that my understanding is they've been following a search pattern with gaps between each search track chosen based on the expected size of the debris field, and an estimated low probability of missing all recognizable debris.
Interestingly though, they reportedly found 4 shipwrecks in the process.
As to SonOfABeach's question, there are no major new leads, but they've continued to analyze the available evidence and refine their estimates of where the plane likely came down. In December of last year, the ATSB released a report concluding the most likely final position was within 25 nm of the last arc the satellite data suggested. Furthermore, debris, some of which wasn't found until 2 years after the flight, and drift modelling suggested a range of about 3 degrees latitude. This defined a roughly 25,000 sq. km. area, smaller than the 120,000 sq. km. that had been searched so far. Even better, once the search area was further refined, existing satellite imagery was re-analyzed in greater detail, and the French Defense Ministry found a couple potential matches near that area early this year - not confirmed, and not even certain to be man-made, but probably man-made.
This refined estimate really frustrated a lot of people because it was completed about the same time as the current search efforts concluded. Many felt like it was a case of, "now we know where it is, but we don't care anymore," when the reality was almost 3 years of searching had expended the budgets available for searching.