MH370 families want new search

NO DECISION ABOUT NEW OFFER It’s win-win say relatives after firm proposes using underwater vehicles.

Relatives of passengers who had been aboard missing flight MH370 yesterday demanded Malaysia accept a US exploration firm’s offer to take up the hunt for the aircraft, which was suspended earlier this year.

No trace of the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, had been found during a lengthy deep-sea hunt in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia, The search was called off in January.

Ocean Infinity, a seabed exploration firm with a fleet of ad- vanced underwater search vehicles, confirmed last week it had offered to resume the hunt.

Malaysian authorities have said discussions are ongoing and the firm only wants payment if the aircraft is found.

Voice 370, an international group of MH370 next-of-kin, urged authorities to take up the offer.

They asked in a statement: “Why hasn’t Malaysia accepted this win-win offer?”

The group said the offer was made more than four months ago and it should now be accepted “without further delay”. The group urged authorities to provide them with details. Neither Ocean Infinity nor the Malaysian government have let on when the proposal had been made.

“We are constantly in limbo. [Authorities involved in the search] do not engage us. It is upsetting and frustrating,” Grace Nathan, a Malaysian lawyer whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the plane, told AFP. “We are always kept in the dark.”

Malaysian transport officials could not be reached for immediate comment yesterday.

Malaysia’s Deputy Transport Minister, Aziz Kaprawi, previously said the nod from Australia and China would be needed for a search deal to be reached.

China, where most of the passengers came from, and Australia were both involved in the earlier search.

Only three fragments of MH370 have been found on Indian Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon.

Australia’s national science body CSIRO said in April that flight MH370 was “most likely” lying north of the former search zone. This is said to be a 120 000 km2 area which had largely been defined through satellite “pings” and estimating the flight distance of the aircraft’s fuel load. – AFP