Originally Posted by
lewko
The Air France was found in an area that had been searched two years prior.
I hate to second guess the Ocean Shield folks because they have done a good job so far. Perhaps they are expanding the radius of search by Bluefin just to keep searching for something while they complete the logistics for the real Plan B?
Maybe they have re-analyzed the actual center of the pings? Otherwise, why not search the primary center of the circle where the pings were heard in a different way? Go cross-ways to the original search with the side-scan sonar, go deeper, etc...
It's not a matter of second guessing. They had to start somewhere and the locations of the detected pings are as good a location as any. However, underwater acoustics are somewhat of a black art, because sound sometimes propagates in very strange ways. I'm sure you've all been in a specially designed (acoustically) room where you can hear a whisper from across the room. Situations where sound propagates unexpectedly far occur in nature. They can be a result of the contour of the sea bed or variations in salinity and/or temperature. So the nominally expected maximum range of propagation of an
underwater locator beacon can be exceeded, in some cases dramatically. I've said before that the combination of the Inmarsat data and the detected pings makes it very likely they are searching in the right general area, but they could easily have to search much longer. The reason I say this is specifically because of the distance between the detected pings. It doesn't make sense to me that the wreckage would be spread over such a wide area, therefore the location is probably somewhere in the middle of the pings, in an area where they haven't even begun to search, because they are decided to begin the search in the immediate vicinity around where the pings were detected. When they complete those searches, they will search elsewhere and eventually locate the wreckage, but it could take a long time.