on the water, not just the submarine but a number of sea vessels have stayed out despite the poor weather. they re not going to leave but still continuing to ramp up. but there s a reality check here, too. from the man heading all of this. what he s saying is that there has to be a reality check. they have to look at reassessing further down the line, erin. the need to pursue the search with vigor and we should continue to do that for some time to come. but inevitably, i think if we don t find wreckage on the surface, we are eventually going to have to probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this review what we do next. so as far as being pressed on the exact timetable, he didn t give that, but he did say look, this is not something that s going to happen in the next two weeks as far as finding the
that the secretary of the ten planes are expected to take off. expected to take off moments from now. there are going to be a total of ten planes. that is going to be one of the targets. but what is really going to come into play with those four objects that you re referring to are the sea vessels. there are ten sea vessels that will be working. they ll be chris crossing back and forth to try to confirm whether any of the objects spotted by the planes are in fact connected to the missing plane. it is the sea vessels that will be able to pick them up and make that confirmation. not those planes. so very important today. more of the sea vessels there. the most we ve seen throughout all of this. do we know how much of a new search area, how much the search planes have covered? reporter: we know yesterday they did comb through about 280,000 square kilometers. that s a significant size. if you compare it to how it was
we don t have an exact percentage. we can tell you, they are ch chchun chunking off a huge portion every single day. when all of this began a week ago, they were clearing 30,000 square kilometers. they cleared 252,000 kilometers and now for the first time, we see more sea vessels. so 8 were crisscrossing the area going to the places where the objects were spotted. a jump in the amount of square foot age that is being covered. we have pictures of air assets that are going up. there are now two p-8 s looking
plane yesterday, said that theet were quite intriguing because they are all together and bright orange. don t know what that is. there have been a number of items. there is a lot of sea junk out there, jim, very difficult to tell until they are picked up by the sea vessels whether or not they are actually connected to the plane. one of the problems is that the plane will spot something but it is difficult for the ship to get to that same area in time before the current has moved them on. how confident are they when the search planes go up that they will be able to potentially pick them up. it depends on whether or not the g gps buoy is dropped.
kyung lah is at pearce air base in perth, australia. how many planes, ships involved? it changes from time to time. there s nine, there s ten, times eight. what s going on now? reporter: we can tell you that the very first of the planes already in the air, zooming to the search area. throughout the day there will be a total of ten search planes that will be combing this region. it has been described by one of the pilots i spoke with as mowing the sea. they re going to go back and forth over this area looking for any sort of objects from the sky. at sea, ten sea vessels. that s an important distinguishing factor today, don. there are more vessels at sea than ever before. they re very important. a very, very important piece of this puzzle. because once items are spotted from the planes, it s the sea vessels that can go there, pick it up and determine if they re connected to the missing plane. they re hoping to make more headway today, don. the search just beginning for the day. kyung