Search Zone for Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane Spans Two Hemispheres
Multiple countries have sent ships and planes to search.
March 15, 2014— -- The revelation that the vanished Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 remained in the air for nearly seven hours after it disappeared from radar has left officials scrambling to figure out where the jet could have ended up.
Data received by a satellite suggests the plane could have gone along two separate corridors. One path to the north reaches from southern Kazakhstan to northern Thailand.
Missing Malaysian Flight: What We Know
The other corridor to the south starts at Indonesia and goes to the southern Indian Ocean. The two regions span thousands of miles and two hemispheres.
ABC aviation expert John Nance said it’s unlikely the plane followed a path in the northern corridor because countries in that region - such as India - have radar that would have picked up the large jetliner. To find the plane in the more remote the southern region will require a massive undertaking, he said.
“You have to add an hour of flight time to the [southern] radius,” said Nance. “That’s 500 miles in either direction [from the radius.] It’s an enormous, enormous area.”
“The bottom line is we’re going to have some luck,” said Nance.
