Disappointment as tech firm’s MH370 search ends

The head of a US technology company that scoured the Indian Ocean seabed for more than three months looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said yesterday he was disappointed the hunt failed to find wreckage and hoped to take part in some future search.

Malaysia said last week the search by Texas-based Ocean Infinity would end yesterday after two extensions of the original 90-day time limit.

Ocean Infinity chief executive Oliver Plunkett said the search would soon end after covering more than 112,000sq km of remote ocean floor — an area more than four times larger than the zone targeted by experts as the most likely crash site.

“I would firstly like to extend the thoughts of everyone at Ocean Infinity to the families of those who have lost loved ones on MH370. Part of our motivation for renewing the search was to try to provide some answers to those affected,” Plunkett said. “It is therefore with a heavy heart that we end our current search without having achieved that aim,” he added.

Plunkett said he was pleased to hear the new Malaysian Government had made finding the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 people aboard a priority.

“We sincerely hope that we will be able to again offer our services in the search for MH370 in the future,” Plunkett said.

Malaysia signed a “no cure, no fee” deal with Ocean Infinity in January to resume the hunt for the plane, a year after the official search in the southern Indian Ocean by Australia, Malaysia and China was called off. Ocean Infinity stood to be paid US$70 million ($101.3m) if it had found the wreckage or black boxes. No other search is scheduled.

Australian Transport Minister Michael McCormack said the fouryear search had been the largest in aviation history and tested the limits of technology and the capacity of experts and people at sea.

“We will always remain hopeful that one day the aircraft will be located,” McCormack’s office said in a statement.

Australia, Malaysia and China agreed in 2016 that an official search would only resume if the three countries had credible evidence that identified a specific location for the wreckage. Flight 370 vanished on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.