Ten years after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people on board, the country’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke said on Friday (December 20) that the government has legally agreed to continue the search for bodies.
The government has accepted a new proposal from the US exploration company Ocean Infinity, which will receive $70 million if major accidents are found.
A previous search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed, found no signs of debris.
Only a few parts of the fuselage have been found washed up on beaches in the Indian Ocean and East Africa.
Here are some details on the search for MH370 and the unsolved mystery of what happened
What’s going on?
A Boeing 777 went missing from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. The last takeoff on the plane was about 40 minutes from takeoff.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed the letter “Good night, Malaysian three seven zero”, as the plane entered Vietnamese airspace.
Soon after, its transponder was disabled, meaning it could not be easily tracked.
Military radar showed that the plane left its course to fly back to northern Malaysia and the island of Penang, then exited the Andaman Sea towards the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It then turned south and all contact was lost.
What was done to find the plane?
Malaysia, Australia and China have launched an underwater search in an area of ​​120,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean, based on data from automatic communication between the Inmarsat satellite and the aircraft.
The search, which cost an estimated $143 million, was called off after two years in January 2017 with no trace of the plane.
In 2018, Malaysia accepted a “no life, no money” offer from Ocean Infinity for a three-month search, meaning the company would only be paid if it found the plane.
That search covered 112,000 sq km north of the target area and was unsuccessful, ending in May 2018.
What did the investigation report say?
A 495-page report on the disappearance of MH370, published in July 2018, said that the control of the Boeing 777 may have been done deliberately to go off course, but investigators could not determine who did this.
The report also highlighted the mistakes made by air traffic control centers in Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City and issued recommendations to avoid a repeat incident.
Investigators have stopped short of offering any conclusions about what happened to MH370, saying that depends on finding the plane’s debris.
What will the new search include?
The new search, once a contract has been signed between Ocean Infinity and the Malaysian government, will expand the previous search area by 15,000 sq km, according to Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
The contract will last for 18 months and the company has indicated that the best time to search will be between January and April.
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