A last-ditch effort is underway to locate the wreckage of the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The flight’s disappearance more than a decade ago has become one of the aviation industry’s biggest mysteries.
Malaysia has given the go-ahead to the company Ocean Infinity to conduct another search of the Indian Ocean. Should the company find the plane, then it stands to make a whopping £56million as a reward. After months of painstaking negotiations, Malaysia’s government finally approved the new hunt for flight MH370.
Transport Minister Loke Siew Fook said “The government is committed to continuing the search operation and providing closure for the families of the MH370 passengers.”
A vast area of 15,000 square kilometres (5,790 square miles) of the southern Indian Ocean will be scanned by the company’s cutting edge mothership, the Armada 7806.
The newly identified high-priority zoner lies some 1,200 miles off the coast of Perth in Australia.
The Boeing 777 vanished with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
Despite extensive searches in the years since it vanished, no wreckage has been found.
Previous efforts, including a multinational search that cost $150m (£120m), ended in 2017.
The governments of the three nations involved – Malaysia, Australia and China – said the search would only be resumed “should credible new evidence emerge” of the aircraft’s location.
A 2018 search for the wreckage by Ocean Infinity under similar terms ended unsuccessfully after three months.
Armed with state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and high-resolution sonar, the Armada 7806 has begun systematically scanning the seabed.
Despite the firm deploying advanced technology, deep-sea explorer Craig Wallace warned that the hunt won’t be easy.
“The Indian Ocean that they’re working in is among the worst in the world… wave heights of 20 metres have been recorded. It’s extreme conditions,” he said.