A fresh search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been launched more than a decade after the plane went missing in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity has resumed the hunt for the missing plane, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said on Tuesday.
Loke told reporters contract details between Malaysia and the firm were still being finalised but welcomed “the proactiveness of Ocean Infinity to deploy their ships” to begin the search for the plane, which went missing in March 2014.
Loke said details about how long the search would last had not been negotiated yet.
He also did not provide details about when exactly the British firm restarted its hunt.
The Malaysian government said in December it had agreed to launch a new search for MH370.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the others included Malaysians, Indonesians and Australians, as well as Indian, American, Dutch and French nationals.
The plane has never been found despite the largest search in aviation history.
“We’re very relieved and pleased that the search is resuming once again after such a long hiatus,” Malaysian Grace Nathan, 36, who lost her mother on the doomed jet, told AFP.
Jaquita Gonzales, 62, wife of MH370 flight supervisor Patrick Gomes, said she hoped the resumption of the search would bring her family much-needed closure.
“We just want to know where it is and what happened,” she said. “Memories come back like yesterday, it’s fresh in our heads.”
Previous search
Loke said in December the new search would be on the same “no find, no fee” principle as Ocean Infinity’s previous search, with the government only paying out if the firm finds the aircraft.
The contract was for 18 months and Malaysia would pay $70 million to the company if the plane was found, Loke had previously said.
Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, carried out an unsuccessful hunt in 2018.
The company’s first efforts followed a massive Australia-led search for the aircraft that lasted three years before it was suspended in January 2017.
The Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometres (46,300 square miles) in the Indian Ocean but found hardly any trace of the plane other than a few pieces of debris.
Loke said in December a new 15,000 square kilometre (5,800 square mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean would be scoured by Ocean Infinity.
“They combined all the data and they felt confident that the current search area is more credible,” Loke said on Tuesday.
“They have convinced us that they are ready.”
The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories, ranging from the credible to the outlandish, including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the plane´s course was changed manually.
