MS Scarlett Feaver and actress Elizabeth McGovern In this image, the crew set up camp near the base of the mountain that houses the crash site of the plane that disappeared over Indonesia, near Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, July 17, 2010. The families are also hoping that if a body is found, that it will have been properly identified. "We are going through the very painful process of not knowing what has happened to our loved ones," Schmid said. "The worst thing would be to bury a loved one without being able to know their fate," he said. "If it's any consolation to the families, every person on board is doing what they can to help us find the plane and identify the bodies." The families want a speedy and accurate investigation. "The more delays the greater the frustration," Schmid said. He said the families are "deeply concerned" that there have been few communications in the past few days. "It is extremely disappointing to hear that the president has spoken to the Indonesian president and not us," Schmid said. The families met with officials from Malaysia and Australia, along with Dutch representatives of the airline and search and rescue teams on Tuesday in Beijing, China. Schmid said he felt confident that if "the powers that be had wanted to do something, we would have heard." "It is clear that the governments of China, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Australia, have been very involved in all of this and we have always appreciated their co-operation," Schmid said. The president of Malaysia, said his government has done everything it can to ensure the plane remains at the centre of the search. However, Dutch safety investigators and the French and U.S. military have criticised the way the information is being released. In a statement Friday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. was closely coordinating its effort with the government of Indonesia and called on all parties to work together to maintain a level of transparency. "Every day that this search continues without finding the plane or determining what happened is a day that there is a substantial risk that the plane will not be located," Obama said. Investigators have said, based on available satellite information and what is known about the flight path, it is unlikely the jetliner ended up in the southern Indian Ocean, some 1,450 kilometres off Indonesia's west coast. An Australian navy spokesman said Friday that "the search is continuing in the southern area, where there's a higher level of probability, but that's been a pretty tough search." The navy's HMAS Success frigate and merchant ship Ocean Shield have been conducting the search since Sunday. "They've probably covered 60 to 70 per cent of the search area, but there's just no sign of anything," he said. Race Against Time As the search continues, the search area for the plane remains at 2.9 million square kilometres, making it one of the largest ever. The Australian navy is also carrying out its own deep-sea search along a route where a "ping" signal was detected Tuesday in an area that is roughly 80 miles (130 kilometres) northwest of the main search zone, said retired Air Marshal Mark Binskin, a former chief of the Defence Force's Air Liaison Operations branch. The first phase of the multinational search involved 26 planes and ships, but that number has since been boosted to 42 aircraft and vessels, including two Orion aircraft, three merchant ships, a U.S. P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane and several British and Chinese satellites. If located, the search for the black box will be one of the most important forensic discoveries in history. "At least five people are going to have to take an hour or so in a room and work it through, and the odds are on that these black boxes are going to be in good shape, but there's going to be evidence on them from a fire, for example, if there was a fire," said Roger-Maurice Delorme, head of flight recorders and a former director of operations for the International Civil Aviation Organization. "That's when you really have to be careful because you're dealing with a fire that could have been more or less recent." In addition to the black box, Schmid said the families want to know what happened to "anything on the plane that could lead to answers about what happened to them." The wreckage has yet to be located. If it has been, the families have been asked to identify the bodies of their loved ones, the military said. With the search so far failing to yield any results, relatives are facing the prospect of never getting to know what happened to their loved ones. "We hope the plane is not found in the form that it is," Schmid said, "but it will be found." The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday that a magnitude 4.7 earthquake registered just north of where the plane went missing, but the agency could not confirm whether the quake had anything to do with the missing jet. On Wednesday, another small aftershock was recorded in the same area, but again there is no way to be sure if that quake, too, was linked to the missing plane. As they wait and hope, Schmid said it would help the grieving families if they knew what caused the plane to go missing, though he acknowledged it would only answer a small part of the mystery. "What we need to find is the black box, which will be in good condition and will be able to provide us with evidence to give us the answers that we seek," he said. To hear the full interview with Paul Schmid, click the audio link at the top of this page. The Missing Piece: What is Happening to the Plane? The Missing Piece: What is Happening to the Plane? 1/ 9 Onboard the flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, the jet's transponder, which communicates with radar-based navigation systems, stopped functioning after the plane entered Vietnamese airspace, air traffic control officials said. Then the jet’s “ping” signal was cut off just before it would have passed through Vietnamese airspace. (AFP/Getty Images) Hijacking theory abandoned 2/ 9 An Air France investigator (right) points to a map of the Seychelles islands as he leaves the French defense ministry in Paris on Feb. 28, 2014. Air France flight AF447 crashed in the Indian Ocean on June 1, 2009. (AFP/Getty Images) 3/ 9 A U.S. satellite image released by NASA in September 2006 shows the location of Air France Flight 447. (AFP/Getty Images) 4/ 9 An Australian satellite image of the “black box” of the Air France plane that vanished on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. (AFP/Getty Images) 5/ 9 An image of the aircraft’s last communication made through satellite tracking as it made its way across the Indian Ocean. (AP Photo/The French Defence Agency) 6/ 9 French investigating team members gather for a news conference during the third day of search operations for the missing Air France jet off of the southeastern coast of Australia. (AP Photo/Rodolphe Muel) 7/ 9 An investigator shows a map as he searches for missing Air France flight during the third day of search operations for the missing Air France jet off