Growing search efforts

Josh Voorhees has a Slate article about the still-missing plane:

Ten days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people aboard, an exhaustive international search has produced no sign of the Boeing 777, raising an unsettling question: what if the airplane is never found? Such an outcome, while considered unlikely by many experts, would certainly torment the families of those missing. It would also flummox the airline industry, which will struggle to learn lessons from the incident if it doesn't know what happened. While rare nowadays, history is not short of such mysteries, from the most famous of all, American aviator Amelia Earhart, to planes and ships disappearing in the so-called Bermuda Triangle. Experts say the plane's disappearance will likely put pressure on airlines and governments to improve the way they monitor planes, including handoff procedures between countries. Flight 370 vanished after it signed off with Malaysian air-traffic controllers, and never made contact with their Vietnamese counterparts as it should have. And if the plane is never found, liability issues will be a huge headache for courts. With no wreckage, it would be difficult to determine whether the airline, manufacturers, or other parties should bear the brunt of responsibility.
The search for the aircraft is among the largest in aviation history. The Navy said P-3 and P-8 surveillance aircraft were methodically sweeping over swaths of ocean, known as 'mowing the grass', while using radar to detect any debris in the water and high-resolution cameras to snap images. Australian and Indonesian planes and ships are searching waters to the south of Indonesia's Sumatra Island all the way down to the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Huang Huikang, China's ambassador to Malaysia said China had begun searching for the plane in its territory, but gave no details. China also was sending ships to the Indian Ocean, where they will search nearly two hundred thousand square miles of sea. The area being covered by the Australians is even bigger, and will take weeks to search thoroughly, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division.

Rico says this should've been easier...