(Image source from: How the search for missing MH370 is fraught with obstacles?})

For the Australian search crew in trail of the missing Boeing 777, the task of finding the floating chunks of wreckage in the deep water of the Indian Ocean is going to be a long and arduous one, warns oceanographers and aviation experts.

Even if they succeed in recovering the drifting debris of the missing MH370 aircraft, locating the rest of the scattered remains and piecing them together will be tougher. And the toughest of all would be finding out what really happened to the Malaysian plane in truth.

The major obstructions in the way of the Australia-led search operation, which involves four aircraft and seven warships, combing a 23,000 sq km area of ocean some 2,500 km south-west of Perth, are immense.

Firstly, the satellite images spotted the two flotsam almost five days ago. There are very strong Antarctic circumpolar current, which runs at around one mile an hour, in the area where the jetsam was spotted. In the past five days, those objects could have floated another100 miles away or so. Also, rough seas, high winds and poor visibility will make the search all the more difficult in locating the lost plane.

In such stormy weather conditions, even radar and infrared would be of little help. The crew will have to eyeball to locate the large pieces of floating debris from the crashed plane. Another hitch is the strong waves could also break up the large flotsam into fragments, making things all the more complicated.

Secondly, even if the air search team manage to spot and identify the flotsam as MH370, it will be up to the surface ship to go and pick the remains. Not just that. Further will lie the gargantuan task of locating the aircraft's remains on the ocean floor. And any deepwater rescue would need good weather, ideally summertime. Right now, it's winter there.

Also, once the debris is found, the search crew will have to backtrack that debris and 'X marks the spot' where the plane actually hit the water. And finding those bits of flight data recorders would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Assuming that they work out the "X", which is in itself a process laden with potential errors and misinterpretations, accident investigators will then have to send down autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with sonar or with high-resolution cameras to scan the sea floor and compile a detailed data of the area. This could take up to a month and would be critical in finding the plane's tail section as well as recovering the vital black box containing the digital flight data, which registers information for the first 25 hours of flight and could yield priceless information.
With so many jeopardies ahead of the critical search, it would require a miracle from heaven for the world to know what happened to MH310.

AW: Suchorita Dutta