Australia Scours Area

Australia is scouring an area in the southern Indian Ocean that’s about 1 1/2 times the size of California for missing Malaysian Air Flight 370, as the U.S. was asked to use its satellites to help in the search. An AP-3C Orion plane was sent to comb 600,000 square kilometers (230,000 square miles) of ocean, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Malaysia’s Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he spoke with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about the search, which has become the longest in modern commercial aviation. Malaysia is leading a multination search that spans 2.24 million square nautical miles, he said. “A needle in a haystack remains a good analogy,” John Young, the authority’s general manager for emergency response, said at a briefing today. “It’s a large area with aircraft that are towards the end of their operating limits. So they get a short period of time in the search area, and that dictates this is going to take quite a long time.” Five more aircraft, including one each from the U.S. and New Zealand, will tomorrow also begin scanning an area that’s about 1,500 nautical miles southwest of Perth in Western Australia. Malaysia had drawn up a northern corridor and a southern zone to search for Flight 370. China and Kazakhstan have agreed to lead the search areas closest to their countries in the northern zone. The U.S. has the best ability to assist in the southern corridor, the minister said.