We report on the current status of the FLASH survey, and present some new results from pilot observations in several GAMA fields. FLASH is a unique blind HI absorption line survey, ultimately targeting more than 100,000 background radio continuum sources throughout the entire southern sky using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). The survey is well-designed to search for both associated and intervening absorption lines in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 1.0, aiming at understanding the evolution of HI gas in galaxies as well as various physical processes in active galactic nuclei such as accretion and feedback. Our most up-to-date pilot survey data, covering 1000 square degrees with the full 36-antenna telescope, is ideal for validating observation and data processing in the lowest-frequency ASKAP band (700-1000MHz). We discuss our data processing and data quality assessment, highlighting some detections of associated/intervening HI absorption lines. These absorptions allow us to trace the HI content of active and normal galaxies at intermediate redshifts where the HI emission line is too weak to be detectable.