Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search ended

CANBERRA, Australia – Nearly three years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, the three nations scouring the southern Indian Ocean for the missing airliner suspended the search, despite pleas from families affected by one of the greatest aviation mysteries of modern times.

“Today the last search vessel has left the underwater search area,” the governments of Malaysia, China, and Australia said in a joint statement.

“Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has not been located in the 120,000 squarekilometer underwater search area in the southern Indian Ocean. Accordingly, the underwater search for MH370 has been suspended.”

Flight 370 vanished from radar en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board from more than a dozen countries, including 152 Chinese nationals. That was followed by a long and confoundInstitutions ing search across thousands of square miles of remote ocean in what became the most expensive in aviation history – totaling about $150 million. The search was impeded by storms and fierce ocean currents.

Authorities have long believed the Boeing 777-200 wasn’t under human control at the time of its apparent crash, based on communications between the aircraft and an Inmarsat PLC satellite. That communications data – which was central to fixing the 120,000 squarekilometer search area – suggests Flight 370 was descending at a rate of at least 12,000 feet a minute when it entered the water, likely in a series of automated dives called fugoids. (WSJ)