Flight MH370 was officially announced to be in a desolate area of the Indian Ocean around 1500 miles west of Perth, Australia on Monday.
However, the area is a wide and unpredictable one with strong currents and trenches up to 3 miles deep. This will continue to challenge those that are still searching.
“We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack,” Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, said Monday. “We’re still trying to define where the haystack is.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wre_RXSr3sw
The search was also delayed on Tuesday due to some rough weather, but efforts should begin again on Wednesday to comb the area, which is between 400,000 and 500,000 square nautical miles in the southern tip of the southern corridor of the Indian Ocean, according to CNN. In addition to the multi-national search teams, the Royal Malaysian Air Force is conducting its own inquiry concerning the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the search involves agencies with “expertise in satellite communications and aircraft performance”, but that won’t make the search easy by any means. An area of about 193,000 square miles has already been searched according to Australian Defense Minister David Johnston, and the process isn’t easy for the pilots.
“With eight hours of flying to and from the search region, the fleet of P-3 Orion aircraft and other military aircraft have only a precious few hours to scour the search tracks they have been given.” Johnston said.
When asked why he was confident that the location of the plane was accurate, he said, “I am confident of that because that’s the best we’ve got at this point in time.”
It could very well be some time before the plane is located, and there are reportedly 15 days until the battery that helps search teams locate the plane’s black box runs out.
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