(Bloomberg) — Investigators looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean may almost double the area they are combing if the current search doesn't yield any results.

The search area may jump to 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) and the additional territory may take a year to comb, according to a statement issued by Malaysia, China and Australia. Ministers of the three countries met in Kuala Lumpur today to agree on the new course of action after 13 months of search so far yielded not one piece of debris.

The decision means the search for the plane will continue after the current search zone is fully analyzed around the end of May. Any solution to the longest search for a commercial jet in aviation history hinges on finding the black box flight recorders attached to the missing aircraft's tail section, which may hold clues on what happened to the plane that dropped out of radars March 8, 2014, while on a routine commercial flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

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