On Friday, “black box” locators were deployed for the first time in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with just days to go until the box’s batteries die, cutting off the pinger signal. Reuters reports that two ships, one Australian and one British, began searching the ocean floor at opposite ends of a 150-mile track in the Indian Ocean, meeting in the middle. The ships started in the area with the “highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water” based on satellite data, according to Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the Australian official coordinating the search. Up to 14 planes and nine ships continued looking for debris on Friday. “I think there’s still a great possibility of finding something on the surface,” Houston said. “There’s lots of things in aircraft that float. In previous searches life jackets have appeared which can be connected to the aircraft that was lost.” The search area, which was moved farther north on Thursday due to new data analysis, is about 86,000 square miles, or roughly the size of Minnesota.
