looking from the air with a multiple of airplanes, and, of course, that has really resulted in nothing. they found a lot of garbage in the ocean, but they haven t found anything related to the airplane. as far as the sea state is concerned, and the surface search, again, you have a lot of assets. you have a lot of manpower that has returned nothing. now they re going on have to just focus and try and scale that down and put all of their energy now into this underwater search. hopefully with the side scan sonar which could take a very long time. you re looking at a month easily. they re going to probably put several other assets, maybe even the echo on station to wait and see what turns up with the side scan sonar, and if there is anything that s curious, then they ll pursue that. i think the surface search, you know, there was no benefit to that as far as we can see now. only because there was nothing ever sited that was related to this airplane. i can t believe we ve got so little a
debris, for surface wreckage could soon be coming to an end. he said that he thought that by this time it was becoming increasingly unlikely they would find any wreckage. though, had he to consult partners before making that final decision. ian williams, thanks again. let s bring in friend of the show former ntsb vefrlt greg phythe. it seems like as the search goes on it only gets harder. it does, and that s the big thing. we talked about this a while back, and that is there comes a point where the search effort has to have at least a re-evaluation. you know, when you look at what angus houston is saying, this they re going to suspend the surface search, if you will, the air search and the surface search, it s because of
something that was bilged overboard by a sea-going vessel. they re going to look at that. the other thing is that because we re now 38 days into it, to have an oil slick five miles or even two miles from where they re searching is highly unlikely only because the sea state has been so churned up over the last 38 days. however, you could have a slow leak out of a wing tank if that wing tank stayed intact, it sunk, and it s just leaking fuel. we could be cautious with that one, but i don t think that it s going to really pan out to be anything related to mh 370. oh. greg, when you talk about oil on the surface of the ocean there, that s the kind of thing that, of course, relates to a surface search, as we re learning they re doing less of that. can you walk us through what that means when they say they re not doing as much on the surface here? sure. they re going to ramp it down. the aerial search has really turned up nothing. they ve expended a lot of resources over the last 38 da
diminishing returns. unfortunately, we don t have diminishing returns. we just don t have any returns. they never found any wreckage. they have to now put all their assets and really their manpower in this underwater search. yeah. well, greg, there was a report over the weekend from the malaysian newspaper, the muse straights times, that the co-pilot placed a call on his cell phone after the plane had been diverted from its original route and the theory here essentially was that the plane was flying low enough at that point for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up the phone s signal, but if the plane was flying at this low of an altitude, wouldn t it have been burning up too much fuel to make it to the spot in the ocean where they think it eventually ended up? absolutely. that s the big problem here. there are so many of these little pieces of information that come out that are not vetted. first off, the airplane was at 35,000 feet. to dive down to 5,000 feet or whatever