With search for Flight 370 halted, a cold-case file awaits
CHINA | BANGKOK — For two years and more, it has been a lost ship, a metal container carrying 239 souls that simply disappeared one late Asian night never to be seen again. And now, the search for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely will become a thing of memory, too.
With Friday’s announcement that the meticulous ocean search for the missing jetliner will be suspended, one of this decade’s most tantalizing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming a cold case.
The truth may be out there. The problem is, you have to know where to look. And that’s been precisely the problem all along.
The Boeing 777-200ER vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Investigators believed it turned back west and then south before dropping into the Indian Ocean west of Australia. The Malaysian government has concluded that it was deliberately steered off course.
In China, relatives have roundly denounced the decision.
“They are actually just playing with words,” Hu Xiulan, the mother of a Flight 370 passenger, said Monday. “’Suspension’ means termination to us. We strongly demand a re-investigation into how the plane went missing, and there is no excuse for the suspension of the search.”
The decision to suspend the search was made jointly by the three countries conducting the operation: Malaysia, Australia and China. Together, they already have spent $135 million searching a 46,300-square-mile area.