A new chapter in what is sometimes called the greatest mystery in aviation history: ten years after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the search for the aircraft is resumed. Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said this on Friday. A company that conducts underwater research with unmanned vessels, Ocean Infinity, will search in a new part of the Indian Ocean, after two previous failed search attempts. Only if the company manages to locate the plane or parts thereof will it receive US$70 million, Loke said.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. The aircraft was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it suddenly disappeared from radar. According to official investigations, the plane deviated from its original route, heading south. Despite frantic international search efforts, the device was never found. It is also not known exactly where the plane should be located. A few loose pieces of wreckage washed up in various places along the coast of Africa and a few islands in the Indian Ocean.
‘New data about location’
According to Loke, the ministry has examined new data from various experts that could point to the location of the aircraft. “Our team has reviewed that information and finds it credible,” Loke said. Based on that data, Ocean Infinity saw new possibilities for a search and will comb an area of about 15,000 square kilometers on the seabed. That is a significantly smaller area than a previous joint search effort by Malaysia, Australia and China, when around 120,000 square kilometers were surveyed.
According to a voluminous report on the disappearance of MH370, published in 2018, there are indications that the aircraft’s software was deliberately manipulated to deviate from the route. Who would be responsible for this, and what exactly happened, has never been discovered. This requires more debris from the aircraft. In the absence of answers, the disappearance of MH370 has been fueling all kinds of conspiracy theories for ten years. The plane is said to have been hijacked and left on an island in the Indian Ocean, or somewhere in Kazakhstan.