Well-known sportsman missing in Las Cañadas

[Guanche]

It is a strange development. On the face of it it should be a relatively easy search. If the mans a 'Trail' runner the trails should be well known and easily searched. If the man fell he should be within yards of the trail. Of course it there is a drop then sadly he will be at the bottom of the drop.
In a long search such as this there is a danger of not trusting your search team. This can be made worse if you have non searched trained people assisting. Once that doubt takes hold you have to redeploy searchers to search land previously done and it wastes a lot of time and effort.

[Michael]

If it should turn out that they were searching in the wrong area all along? 

[Guanche]

I and a few of my colleagues had a very one sided battle with our bosses about how searches should be conducted in the years before I retired. One sided because we were 'plebs' and they were the bosses.

For years we started at the last known point the person was seen or was known to have been and work out from there. It would seem that given the mobile phone information there is a direction to follow so all trails in that direction would have to be covered.
Unfortunately the system is labour intensive and hard work and that means expensive. So some oink of a Sergeant looking for a promotion decided that the American way was best! He proposed some spurious stupid formula that they use in the US to work out the most likely places someone would end up.
It was f++king stupid and a complite waste of time but very scientific. We had teams going all over the place passing each other as they went. It was a disaster and we knew it. However because it was sold as cheaper the bosses loved it because it was American plus we had a brand new assistant Chief Constable who had spent a year with the FBI such is the problems of having graduates parachuted in!.
So the searches were flawed and in the end all the land was searched as it should have been in the first bloody place but in a haphazard way which resulted in large areas not being searched. But it was cheap and some oink got a desk job out of it. Fu++ing amateurs!! I bet their still doing it now!
I can't help but wonder if they are using the same system here? It does have a name but for the life of me I can't remember it.