Jet Disappearance Hits Record as Search Widens

TIME Magazine | 18 March 2014

A boy comforts a crying girl during a special prayer for the passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in central Kuala Lumpur, March 18, 2014. Damir Sagolj—Reuters

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has now been missing for 11 days, the longest period of time a plane has been missing in the history of modern commercial aviation. Investigators, however, are no closer to finding the lost jet and expanded the search the area Tuesday

Missing for 11 days without any promising clues and a search area that’s only growing, the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 became the longest in the history of modern commercial aviation on Tuesday.

The international search for the jetliner, which vanished during a March 8 flight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has now expanded to almost three million square miles—almost the size of the United States.

“This is an enormous search area. And it is something that Malaysia cannot possibly search on its own,” Malaysian transportation minister Hishamuddin Hussein said at news conference. “I am therefore very pleased that so many countries have come forward to offer assistance and support to the search and rescue operation.”

Twenty-five countries are collaborating on the search which spans from China to Australia and has included parts of the Indian Ocean. There were 239 people on board.

While new information has been sparse and often conflicting, a spokesman for Thailand’s air force said Tuesday that its radars might have detected the flight minutes after the plane’s communications went down. That would support suspicions that flight sharply turned West, deviating from its intended path.

In its 11 days missing, the black box would have presumably lost one third of its battery life, according to ABC.