Thanks - I must have been reading something that was less than accurate or my memory is incorrect.

This will prove a challenge - and I'd not be surprised if they call it off if they haven't found the "black box" by the time winter makes the weather even worse, until things calm down later this year.

Let's hope they find it rapidly, though it's quite a large search area. At 400-450 knots, the aircraft could have continued on a while after the last "ping" was received before it exhausted its fuel supply. Or not, of course; at this point we have no idea, and there's also a range that's speed dependent due to the Doppler effect on the ping analysis.