Towed Pinger News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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,...

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 ope...

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 ...

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. aga...

It a few more days in case something should happen and then begin the process of switching out from this towed pinger locater to the sonar mapping to begin the laborious process of mapping this area. logically they begin where they got the great two and a half hour pinging event because that's the strongest card they have in the deck. and they'll probably begin the search out from there and then the question becomes, how long do you keep this aerial search up? that's an open question. >> all right. captain gurley, last word on what you see happening potentially this week. >> completely agree w...