The Debris Swarm

Tony Abbott closed the surface search on 28 April 2014 saying floating debris would by then have waterlogged and sunk. Modern 777 structure is metal, composite and plastic; AF447 produced thousands of floating pieces. MH370 produced almost nothing until 29 July 2015 (Réunion right flaperon), then Gibson’s Mozambique “No Step” on 27 February 2016, then a wave of Madagascar, Mauritius, Tanzania and South Africa identifications. CSIRO reverse-drift weighted 7th-arc latitudes; lepas barnacles on some pieces constrain time-in-water. Wise treats the long quiet, then the swarm, as a data point of its own — including engine-cowl timing that is awkward for simple drift from the official box. The geography of the field (western Indian Ocean, not Western Australia) is not seriously in dispute.