Comment on Search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501 expanded

The first full day of a growing multi-nation hunt for an AirAsia passenger jet lost over Indonesian waters ended Monday with few clues to its disappearance and a grim acknowledgment by officials that “the worst may have happened.”Helicopters and surveillance aircraft from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia returned to their bases, some after flying 10 hours or more over a choppy Java Sea, the focal point of the search for the airliner that was carrying 162 mostly Indonesian passengers and crew.The first tantalizing possible traces of the missing Airbus A320-200 -- which lost contact with air traffic control in heavy thunderstorms during a scheduled two-hour flight to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on Sunday morning -- were inconclusive or ultimately discounted.Indonesian air force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto told The Times that searchers in a helicopter and a C-130 plane had seen an oil slick about 105 nautical miles off Belitung island near the Karimata Strait, which connects the archipelago nation to Singapore.