Boeing high-tech Navy plane joins hunt for jet
Even in this high-tech age, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may rely on good luck and the oldest of sensors: the human eye.
After a futile search in the Andaman Sea that produced 400 radar contacts and no sign of aircraft debris or other clues, the U.S. Navy has sent its most advanced surveillance plane, a P-8A Poseidon, to join planes from Australia and New Zealand in scanning 230,000 square miles off the southern Indian Ocean.
While Navy surveillance planes are equipped with radar, cameras and electrooptical sensors, searching for objects on open water is an arduous task, with sailors at every window looking with binoculars and the plane diving to identify targets visually, said Michael Boston, a retired Navy chief petty officer whos served as an electronic-warfare specialist on a P-3C Orion surveillance plane.