Hunt for missing jet widens

WE HAVE the technology. With the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight in its second week, there are fears that any wreckage may be too deep to find if it crashed in the Indian Ocean. Not so, says David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. In 2011, he used robot submarines to find  Air France flight 447 beneath the Atlantic, 4 kilometres down. “If the aircraft is in the oceans, given time we can, and will, find it,” he says. Signals from the jet have led to air and sea searches along two corridors: north-west from Malaysia towards Kazakhstan, and south-west out  over the Indian Ocean. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is flying missions 3000 km west of Perth  over the southern part of the ocean, guided by satellite intelligence from the US National Transportation Safety Board. China has deployed 21 satellites to look for wreckage.