MH370: How a P3 Orion aircraft marks a location of an object at sea

When the crew on an Australian P3 Orion aircraft notices any objects that are floating on the water surface in the Indian Ocean, the first thing they do is to sound an alarm by shouting out 'mark, mark, mark!'.

They will then quickly drop a smoke bouy (flare) that will last for 45 minutes so the position won't be lost while the aircraft's GPS system locks in on the location.

The pilot of the plane will then reposition the plane to enable a photograph to be taken that will then be brought back to base to be analysed.

An alert will then go out to any vessels nearby that can head towards the location in order to retrieve the object to be further identified.

"That's how my crew and I are trained to optimise our search time while in the search area," explained Captain Russel Adams, the pilot of the first Australian P3 Orion to land back at RAAF Base Pearce in Perth today.

Although the captain and his crew did not locate any significant objects in their search area on Saturday, they remain optimistic because after a spell of bad weather which resulted in the search operation being called off midday Friday, things seems to be improving.

"The weather has been reasonably good today and we had a visibility of about four to five kilometres," explained Adams.

But there were white caps on the surface, which are basically wind generated waves that creates white bubbles or foam, and the crew had a bit of trouble distinguishing between those and the water.

Adams and his crew are due to head out again on Sunday to the new search area which is located 1,800 km from the Western Australian mainland, 700 km closer than the initial search area further south.