Sorry .. but the last 3 posts show very little understanding of S&R procedures/requirements ..

A US carrier has lots of fast jets(fighters) and a few helicopters. fast jets are useless at S&R as they have limited lookout and travel far too fast. Helicopters take way too long to get to any search area to SEARCH, and carry too few crew to do the lookout thing properly ..but are excellent when told exactly where to go for a pickup. An airliner cannot get low enough/slow enough to do lookout either.
The aircraft used ARE capable of doing the job... to do S&R you need to be between 300 & 500 ft above the water .. anything higher and you have 3 problems ... the eye tends to look out too far and try and cover too big an area in the time given, wave motion can easily hide" an object on its lee side, and finally any objects get smaller as height increases, so the chance of missing increases rapidly. It is only possible to concentrate for around 30 minutes, after this time the eyes tend to focus on infinity and you simply won'r "see" an object even if it is there... makes the lookout a tad pointless.... to get round this an S&R aircraft will carry at least twice as many lookouts as needed so that they can be rotated at heir stations and rest their eyes.
Lastly, and probably the most misunderstood aspect of all ... a slow manouverable aircraft is a MUST ... the faster the aircraft goes the WORSE it is .. (ok you all say.. it covers a larger area in the time ... but the above shows it is more likely to miss an object.. but that is not this point) ... lets say that the fast aircraft is lucky and does spot an object .... it has to mark it and then keep sight of it .. no point in using GPS etc as the object is actually moving in the water.. the fast aircraft simply CANNOT turn and keep eyeball contact with the object .. a slow aircraft can.. and does... it is imperative when investigating an object that visual contact is not lost, and the observer "talks" the pilot, crew, cameraman etc etc on to what has been seen.
The C130 Hercules that I flew for 38 years was a good S&R aircraft as it did 90% of the above well, but it took a while to reach the search area due to its, relatively, low cruising speed. The Nimrod (in its day), was even better as it did all the above but got there faster.