scotia in 1988, the search recovery and investigation took four years and cost $39 million. but what of the collateral costs of missteps and mismanagement of the investigation? >> frankly, the malaysian government has not handled this at all well. and that's clearly cost time and resources. >> reporter: the many governments engaged in this search already own these assets, including ships and planes. so one way for them to look at this at least is an extended high-stakes training exercise. joe johns, cnn, kuala lumpur, malaysia. >> joining me to talk about the cost of the search is cnn analyst david suse, expert christine dennison. on the phone from boston is oceanographer david gallo who helped in the search for air france flight 447. with your background in searching for two years for air