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It astounds me that they wouldn't already have used the best equipment on the market? I mean, it's the most prominent underwater search of recent decades, funded by three sovereign states.

My gut feeling is that some people in power do not want this plane found.

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As a sibling comment alludes, everyone underestimates how astoundingly vast Earth's oceans are.

I did too, until I looked out the window on my first daytime flight over the sea. A seemingly endless stretch of unbroken blue. It was probably the next best thing to being in space and made me appreciate just how much water there is!

And that's just the surface.

Everyone also grossly underestimates how much it costs per-day to operate a large offshore services vessel in the open ocean, in terms of salaries/benefits, fuel, insurance, cost of the ship as a whole relative to whatever sort of financing paid for it, inmarsat services, food, etc. There's a reason why submarine cable laying and repair is so expensive...

From what I can tell, prior to this latest effort, around $200m dollars have already been spent looking for this plane.

Do not underestimate the power of thousands of meters of water.

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