With its blunt, unswept lines and massive four-blade propellers, the P3 Orion is a throwback to a bygone era of aviation.
The plane I flew on from Pearce air base in Western Australia out into the southern Indian Ocean was delivered to the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1966, making it considerably older than most of the crew.
But it is the ideal machine to meet the formidable challenge of searching for an airliner that may have gone down over some of the remotest seas on our planet.
The crew are a tight bunch, used to making long flights together over the Pacific within the narrow confines of the aircraft.
They are led by Capt Brett "Slim" McKenzie - a pilot with 25 years of experience, who flew Air New Zealand Boeing 747s for a while before coming back to the Orion - and Flight Lt Eric King, a British officer on secondment from the Royal Air Force, as the UK no longer has long-range maritime surveillance aircraft after the cancellation of the Nimrod project four years ago.
Skimming above
Based on the airframe of a mid-sized 1950s airliner, most of the P3's interior is taken up by a rack of large screens on which information from the plane's formidable arsenal sensors is displayed and analysed.
It has sophisticated surface radar, infra-red and high-definition cameras in a revolving turret, and what's known as the "stinger" - a fibreglass boom that protrudes from the tail which can detect submarines.