Even if the two unidentified objects shown on satellite images floating in the southern Indian Ocean are debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, finding them could prove to be a long and difficult process that may rely on good luck as much as on advanced technology, oceanographers and aviation experts warned on Thursday.
If the objects are recovered, locating the rest of the Boeing 777 on the ocean floor could turn out to be harder still. And if the fragmented and scattered remains can eventually all be collected and pieced together, working out exactly what happened to flight MH370 may be the toughest job of all.
"You know, we may never actually see anything," said David Learmount, operations and safety editor at aviation news specialists Flightglobal. "It may simply not be feasible. That was actually my first thought when I heard of the flight's disappearance: we may never find it. We may never know what happened."
The obstacles facing the Australian-led search operation, currently involving four aircraft and up to seven ships combing a 23,000 sq km area of ocean some 2,500 km south-west of Perth, are immense – starting with the fact that the satellite images on which the two objects were spotted date from four days ago, and weather and sea conditions in the area are hardly favourable.
"Those satellite images had to be gone over by hand," said Simon Boxall of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. "That takes a lot of experts a lot of time. But the issue is that there are very strong currents where the flotsam was located. The Antarctic circumpolar current runs at around one mile an hour, which may not sound a lot but in ocean terms is very fast. In four days, those objects could have travelled 100 miles."
That is in calm weather conditions, which these are not. Australia's Maritime Safety Authority suspended the search operation as darkness fell on Thursday with no sightings reported, but Australian air force pilots said rough seas and high winds added up to "extremely bad" weather conditions. In stormy weather, waves in that part of the Indian Ocean can reach six metres.
20/03/14 The Guardian
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If the objects are recovered, locating the rest of the Boeing 777 on the ocean floor could turn out to be harder still. And if the fragmented and scattered remains can eventually all be collected and pieced together, working out exactly what happened to flight MH370 may be the toughest job of all.
"You know, we may never actually see anything," said David Learmount, operations and safety editor at aviation news specialists Flightglobal. "It may simply not be feasible. That was actually my first thought when I heard of the flight's disappearance: we may never find it. We may never know what happened."
The obstacles facing the Australian-led search operation, currently involving four aircraft and up to seven ships combing a 23,000 sq km area of ocean some 2,500 km south-west of Perth, are immense – starting with the fact that the satellite images on which the two objects were spotted date from four days ago, and weather and sea conditions in the area are hardly favourable.
"Those satellite images had to be gone over by hand," said Simon Boxall of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. "That takes a lot of experts a lot of time. But the issue is that there are very strong currents where the flotsam was located. The Antarctic circumpolar current runs at around one mile an hour, which may not sound a lot but in ocean terms is very fast. In four days, those objects could have travelled 100 miles."
That is in calm weather conditions, which these are not. Australia's Maritime Safety Authority suspended the search operation as darkness fell on Thursday with no sightings reported, but Australian air force pilots said rough seas and high winds added up to "extremely bad" weather conditions. In stormy weather, waves in that part of the Indian Ocean can reach six metres.
20/03/14 The Guardian
