Search to end for missing MH370 plane
• Great aviation mystery remains unsolved for now
The search for flight MH370 will end next week, Malaysia’s transport minister said on Wednesday, more than four years after the aircraft disappeared and triggered one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries and searches.
The Malaysia Airlines jet vanished in March 2014 with 239 people — mostly from China — on board, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
No sign of the jet was found in a 120,000km² sea search zone and the Australian-led hunt, the largest in aviation history, was suspended in January 2017 but later restarted. After pressure from family members, the former Malaysian government struck a deal with US exploration firm Ocean Infinity to restart the search in January on condition it would only be paid if the Boeing 777 or its black boxes were found.
The company stood to make up to $70m if successful but did not find any sign of the jet despite scouring the seabed with some of the world’s most hi-tech search equipment.
Only three confirmed fragments of MH370 have been found, all of them on western Indian Ocean shores.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke, part of the new government that came to power following May 9 elections, said the hunt was officially meant to finish in April but had been extended and would come to an end next week.
“The search will continue until May 29,” he told reporters.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had said earlier that the contract with Ocean Infinity was being reviewed, as his administration seeks to cut costs after accusing the allegedly corrupt former regime of leaving the public finances in bad shape.
Grace Nathan, a Malaysian lawyer whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the plane, said the news was not a surprise but that the government should leave the “no find, no fee” offer on the table in case a company wants to take on the search sometime in the future. “We can’t tell [the government] what to do but for me and the families ... finding the plane is important for many reasons.”
In a letter to the new administration released before the end of the search was announced, Voice370 — a group representing families of those on the plane whose members include Nathan — urged the government to undertake a “comprehensive review” of all matters related to the plane’s disappearance.
It also called for “an investigation into any possible falsification and/or elimination of records related to MH370”.
The new hunt was in an area of about 25,000km² in the southern Indian Ocean, north of the former search area.
The ship conducting the hunt, Seabed Constructor, was a Norwegian research vessel carrying 65 crew. It used eight autonomous drones fitted with sonars and cameras. /