missing malaysian plane with no luck. nearly three weeks ago, the towed pinger thought to be from the plane s black boxes and the second ping was the highest quality and that s why they launched the bluefin in this small area first. the bluefin is being pushed to its limits, diving deeper than it is designed, using side scan sonar and then resurfaces so data can be analyzed. it s something familiar to david gallo, who was part of the search for flight air france 447. it s a matter of sitting in a room with a white board and there was a long period, months before we came up with the next plan of what to do. reporter: it took 75 days and over two years to find that wreckage. in this investigation, the subsea search area could be shifted or expanded and perhaps to include the other three pings
the north atlantic. thank you for joining us. do you think that investigators are going about the search for flight 370 in the right manner? thank you for inviting me, don. first of all, yes, i think so. titanic did not have a ping er on it that we could listen and be guaranteed within a few miles of the wreck in order to know where it was. and given the fact this is a standard search procedure that the u.s. navy uses for its military planes and things like that, i really can t see any other options. so you think they are searching in the right area, jules? if they heard the pinger, the answer is yes. i spent a bit of time looking in to the specifications of the manufacturer of the pinger. they say you can hear us within two miles and go to the manufacturer of the towed pinger locater and they say we can hear a ping er within two miles and you realize you are in 2 1/2
football fields which sounds like a lot but really it isn t. tom foreman is live in washington. good morning, tom. hi, carol. we ve been saying that once this goes under water it s going to be a much slower and more meticulous and cover a lot less ground. we had the towed pinger which was airline to go at a fairly good speed. now we re looking at the bluefin. yeah, this thing has to crawl along here. it s operating at a depth, carol, that is much lower than what is typically used for this. it can reach down to two and a half miles and it s going to be right at that range here where it s operating. typically you would see these a lot more on coastal shelf areas, carol, where it would be down 1,000 feet, something like that. in that circumstance they may be able to work a fleet of them, several working at once together, although that s rarely attempted, but at this level they get it down to its limit of performance and see if they can
sonar to produce a three dmenal map of the sea floor. each mission takes 24 hours to complete. so searching the entire area could take as long as two months. with the bluefin in, the towed pinger located is out because no pings have been detected in six days. authorities say only one device can search under water at a time. also today authorities announced that an oil slick has been spotted in the search zone but the source has not been determined and a sample will be tested. so many questions for cnn s safety analyst, author of the book why planes crash. good to have you with us. i have so many questions. i hardly know where to start. you and i were chatting off camera. we heard angus houston from australia urging caution and saying, it s going to take some time. you re optimistic. i am because i can be. he s not in a position where he
drag out the search a lot longer. this bluefin 21 submarine takes six times as long to search as the towed pinger did. each mission will take 24 hours to complete. today the sub can only cover an area of about 15 square miles. the entire search area is the size of los angeles. that means the search with just the submarine could take up to two months. i would caution you against rising hopes, that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. it may not. however, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. again, i emphasize that this will be a slow and painstaking process. also this morning, the head of the search team says an oil