Malaysia to resume hunt for Flight MH370, 10 years after it vanished

By Ashley Tang and Mandy Leong

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -Malaysia has agreed to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, its transport minister said on Friday, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” Transport Minister Anthony Loke told a press conference. “We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”

Jiang Hui, whose mother was a MH370 passenger, welcomed the decision to resume the search, but said the process to get there had taken too long and would be better if more players could take part.

“We hope the Malaysian government can adopt a more open approach, such as offering a public reward system where anyone can participate in the search,” he said.

MH370’s last transmission was about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. The pilots signed off as the plane entered Vietnamese air space over the Gulf of Thailand and soon after its transponder was turned off.

Military radar showed the plane left its flight path to fly back over northern Malaysia then out into the Andaman Sea before turning south, then all contact was lost.

Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the aircraft, has since washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.

Loke said the proposal to resume the search in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which had conducted the last search for the plane that ended in 2018.

A contract would be signed to cover an 18-month period and the firm would receive $70 million if wreckage found was substantive, he said, adding the search would be on the seabed of a new area covering 15,000 sq km (5,790 sq miles).

No precise location of the new search area was given.

More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight. Others included 50 Malaysians as well as citizens of France, Australia, Indonesia, India, the United States, Ukraine and Canada, among others.

Relatives have demanded compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group, among others.

CREDIBLE DATA

Loke said Malaysia had assessed new data on the possible location from multiple experts and Ocean Infinity was confident about the chances of locating the wreckage.

“The data has all been presented. Our team has gone through and they felt that it is credible,” he said.

Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the southern Indian Ocean, but it failed on two attempts.

That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia and China in a 120,000 sq km (46,332 sq mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.

The new arrangement would be on a no-find-no-fee principle, whereby Malaysia would not be required to pay Ocean Infinity unless sufficient wreckage is found and verified.

Asked about the prospects of locating all of the plane, Loke said it would be unfair to expect a concrete commitment.

“At this point of time, nobody knows for sure. It has been over 10 years,” he said.

A 495-page report into the disappearance in 2018 said the Boeing 777’s controls were likely deliberately manipulated to go off course, but investigators could not determine who was responsible and stopped short of offering a conclusion on what happened, saying that depended on finding the wreckage.

Investigators have said there was nothing suspicious in the background, financial affairs, training and mental health of both the captain and co-pilot.

(Reporting by Ashley Tang and Mandy Leong; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by John Mair, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)