FILE – Flying Officer Ryan Grazdin scans the waters in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia from a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion aircraft during the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on March 22, 2014.
Rob Griffiths/AP
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Rob Griffiths/AP
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The deep-sea search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will resume on Dec. 30, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport said Wednesday, renewing hopes of locating the plane that disappeared without a trace more than a decade ago.
The Boeing 777 disappeared from radar screens shortly after take-off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, most of them Chinese citizens, on a flight from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed that the plane deviated from its flight path and headed south into the southernmost part of the Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
The Ministry of Transport said in a statement that US-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity will search intermittently from December 30 for 55 days in targeted areas believed to be most likely to find the missing plane.
She added, “The latest development confirms the Malaysian government’s commitment to providing assistance to the families affected by this tragedy.”
The Malaysian government in March gave the green light for a “no discovery, no fee” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume seafloor research at a new 15,000 square kilometer (5,800 square mile) site in the ocean. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million just if the wreck is discovered. The search was halted in April due to bad weather.
An expensive search by a multinational company failed to find any evidence of its location, although the wreck washed ashore on the coast of East Africa and the islands of the Indian Ocean. A private search conducted by Ocean Infinity in 2018 also found nothing.