International and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) air crews and officials, that participated in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, pose for a photograph on the tarmac at the RAAF Base Pearce, located north of Perth, in this picture released by the Australian Defence Force on April 29, 2014.[Photo/Xinhua]

Improved multinational searches

Captain Chris Budde, maritime operations director for the US Navy 7th Fleet, said that when it helped out on a multinational search for another missing plane in December, things went more smoothly thanks to lessons learned from the hunt for Flight 370.

The latter search was for AirAsia Flight 8501, which plunged into the Java Sea near Indonesia, killing all 162 people aboard.

Budde said tasks like establishing common radio frequencies between nations and determining who to contact onshore for search assignments were completed more efficiently after Indonesia studied and learned from Malaysia's experience.

"These events are tragic, but they do help build co-operation and regional stability as militaries work together," he said.

He said the US Navy fleet also managed to modify its technology on the fly in the search for Flight 370, by tweaking its sonar equipment to detect, at short range, pings from an airplane's black boxes. It was able to use that tweak a second time in the search for the AirAsia plane, he said, albeit without success in either instance.