[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

This thread has been very informative: It beats trying to follow the news. Great exchange. I especially liked OldE's explanation of radar/transponders, I'm going to steal that.

My only add is that searching for anything at sea is a very difficult, imprecise exercise unless the area of probability is known soon. Open ocean searches are the definition of a haystack without a needle.

I think we may be better informed than the news station talking heads, and we are definitely more intelligent.

Ossisblue hit a key point - the total absence of verifiable data in this case is amazing. Hard to believe that in 2014 we are utilizing essentially the same methods to search for a downed aircraft that were used in WW2.