The location are over one and a half thousand miles from any significant city on Earth and the zone is very large and moving. There are, in fact, ships in the area now, but they are trying to find a few hundred pieces of debris in an area the size of Alaska.
It's difficult for people who've never been involved in such a search to understand the type of scale of these distances and areas.
... and it must be irritating to take 5 hours to fly there and only be able to search for 2 hours. Then fly back for 5 hours so that your gas doesn’t run out.