Two weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing with 239 people aboard, the search for the missing jetliner has gone analog.
Ten State Emergency Services volunteers from Western Australia have joined the hunt over the Indian Ocean as observers on two commercial jets, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority announced in a Saturday morning media briefing.
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The volunteers will be looking out the windows of the two jetliners, eschewing the high-tech radar and surveillance equipment officials have employed for much of the search so far, in favor of binoculars.
This comes after radar has left searchers largely empty handed.
"Although this search area is much smaller than we started with, it nonetheless is a big area when you are looking out the window and trying to see something by eye," said John Young, an official with AMSA.
"Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday, we have re-planned the search to be visual. So aircraft flying relatively low, very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows and looking to see objects," he later added.
The two jets, said to be “ultra long range commercial jets,” will be focused on a 36,000 square kilometer search area — the same area 2,500 kilometers southwest of Perth where authorities have focused since Wednesday of this week.

Image: Australian Maritime Safety Authority/Associated Press

AMSA has now tasked a total of six aircraft and six merchant ships to assist in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, which intensified after Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the discovery of two large objects floating in the sea on Wednesday.
The Royal Australian Navy HMAS Success is en route as well, and is expected to arrive sometime Saturday afternoon local time.
Malaysia, meanwhile, has requested further assistance of the United States, with Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein asking U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for underwater surveillance equipment, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft is in Perth assisting the search. It has so far come up empty.
US Navy Poseidon searching for #MH370 returns to Perth. Crew say they found nothing in the search area & that weather conditions were clear
— Bill Neely (@BillNeelyNBC) March 21, 2014
The Pentagon has so far spent $2.5 million on the search for the plane, out of a reported $4 million allocated.
The operation has yet to identify, nor locate, the two objects — dealing a blow to relatives of the missing passengers who had gathered around large televisions to hear news of the latest developments. "It is probably the best lead we have right now ... but we need to get there to know if it's really meaningful or not," an AMSA official had said.
The briefing, which was sent to media organizations at 8 a.m. local time, ends with a depressing summation of the frustrating search.
“To date, no sightings have been reported,” it says.
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