Malaysia Set to Relaunch Exclusive Search for the Elusive Missing Plane

Indian sand artist Sudersan Pattnaik applies final adjustments to a sand sculpture conveying prayers for the lost Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared from radar early on March 8 at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, at Puri Beach, on March 9, 2014.

Asit Kumar/AFP via Getty Images

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Asit Kumar/AFP via Getty Images

The Malaysian administration intends to permit a renewed private search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished over ten years ago and continues to be one of the globe’s most perplexing aviation enigmas.

To date, none of the remains of the 239 travelers and crew members on board have been found.

Malaysia’s Minister of Transport Anthony Loke declared on Friday that the hunt will be carried out by Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics company based in Texas that previously conducted a search for MH370 in 2018.

The new pursuit will concentrate on a different site covering 15,000 square kilometers, or 5,800 square miles, in the southern Indian Ocean, based on the “latest findings and data evaluations conducted by specialists and researchers,” Loke stated.

It will operate on a “no find, no fee” basis, meaning Ocean Infinity will only receive compensation if the aircraft’s wreckage is uncovered. The reward is set at $70 million, per the Associated Press. The terms of the agreement will be finalized by early 2025, with hopes that the search will occur between January and April, Malaysia’s government news agency, Bernama, reported.

“It is our duty and commitment to the families, particularly to the next-of-kin, that the government will persist in this search,” Loke added.

On Friday, the group representing the families of the passengers and crew of MH370 expressed their support for a renewed search.

“We, the next of kin, have suffered over a decade of uncertainty,” they articulated in a statement. “We hope that the conditions for the renewed search are settled promptly and that preparations are made for the search to commence.”

A woman reacts as Chinese relatives of the passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 participate in a prayer service at the Metro Park Hotel in Beijing on April 8, 2014.

Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

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Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

Timeline

The initiative to restart the search for the missing flight arrives in the year that commemorates a decade since its disappearance.

On March 8, 2014, 239 passengers and crew members boarded a Boeing 777 aircraft traveling from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. The plane vanished from radar less than an hour after departure, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Among the missing persons are individuals from China, Indonesia, Australia, India, France, Canada, New Zealand, Ukraine, and the U.S. Five of the passengers were under the age of 5.

The disappearance sparked the largest multinational air-sea search in history at the time, involving 33 ships, 58 aircraft, numerous nations, and costing over $150 million. Despite these efforts, the search was discontinued in 2017 without a clear rationale for the plane’s demise.

“It is nearly unimaginable and certainly socially unacceptable in the modern aviation age, with 10 million passengers boarding commercial flights daily, for a large commercial aircraft to be unaccounted for and for the world not to have certainty about what happened to the aircraft and its occupants,” stated the final report on MH370, led by Australia, back in 2017.

In 2018, the Malaysian government greenlit a private search by Ocean Infinity under a similar no-find, no-fee agreement. After close to four months, the operation concluded without success.

This handout satellite image provided by the AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority) displays a map of the intended search area for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 on March 24, 2014.

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Why investigators believe MH370 is in the Indian Ocean

Locating missing aircraft in deep waters is notoriously difficult. Prior searches in the Indian Ocean, the world’s third-largest, have yielded no results, but that does not discount the likelihood that the missing plane resides there.

There are several reasons why Malaysian investigators are convinced that MH370 met its fate in the southern Indian Ocean.

In a flight simulator utilized to recreate the journey, the simulated aircraft flew to the southern Indian Ocean where it circled until it depleted its fuel, investigators reported in 2017.

A series of signals from the aircraft to a satellite in orbit also suggested that the plane continued flying for hours within the southern Indian Ocean. Debris from the aircraft that drifted ashore in Africa further supports the notion that the plane sank in the isolated waters west of Australia.

Recovering the aircraft holds great significance. Until then, investigators maintain that the reason for the plane’s vanishing will remain uncertain.