MH370: Search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight resumes, reviving hope of answers delayed for a decade
BEIJING — The search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was set to resume Tuesday, more than a decade after the plane went missing with 239 people on board in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.
The U.S. marine robotics company Ocean Infinity will conduct seabed search operations intermittently for 55 days as part of its agreement with the Malaysian government, the country’s Ministry of Transport said in a statement this month.
The company will use underwater vehicles, deep sea drones and advanced scanning technology across a 6,000-square-mile swath of the Indian Ocean seabed.
It is unclear whether Ocean Infinity has new evidence of the location of the plane, a Boeing 777 that vanished from air traffic radar on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after departing for Beijing from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, carrying 239 passengers and crew.
Two-thirds of the missing passengers were Chinese, with Malaysians and Americans among the other nationalities on board.
In a statement to NBC News on Monday, Ocean Infinity confirmed that it would be conducting a new search for the missing aircraft, but declined to provide further details because of the “important and sensitive nature” of the operation.
Calls to the Malaysian Ministry of Transport went unanswered on Tuesday.
The resumption of the search, which was called off in April after 22 days because of bad weather, has revived the hope for answers among families still seeking closure.
There was no distress call, ransom demand or sign of a technical problem or bad weather. Minutes after the pilot’s last transmission to Kuala Lumpur, the plane’s location-tracking transponder stopped broadcasting.
The mystery set off the largest underwater search in history, along with multiple conspiracy theories.
Over the years, only a few dozen pieces of suspected debris have washed up on Indian Ocean islands and the African coast. No human remains or large portions of wreckage have been found, though every person on board is presumed dead.
In 2014, the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China conducted the largest and most expensive underwater search in aviation history, mapping a 46,000-square-mile area in the southern Indian Ocean floor that is roughly the size of the state of Ohio. The operation ended in 2017 without finding much.
In 2018, Ocean Infinity took over the search for three months, saying it would be paid only if it found the wreckage in an arrangement that also applies to the current search.
Meanwhile, dozens of lawsuits against Malaysia Airlines have dragged on for years, with a Beijing court ordering compensation for eight Chinese families this month.
Jiang Hui, a 51-year-old Beijing resident whose mother, Jiang Cuiyun, was on the missing plane, said he “fully welcomes” Ocean Infinity’s latest search in partnership with the Malaysian authorities.
Jiang said he believes the missing plane won’t remain a “historical mystery” for long.
“Within five to 10 years at most, the plane will definitely be found,” he told NBC News in a sit-down interview this month.
“I hope the U.S. government can also make its efforts since there were Americans on the plane,” he said. “As the Chinese saying goes, alive or dead, we must see them with our own eyes.”
Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, said that with the latest technology, he is “optimistic” that the wreckage will be found, though searchers don’t have an “exact location to target” yet.
“There is always hope,” he told NBC News in an email Tuesday. “Look at the example of the Titanic — we knew where it sunk but took 100 years to locate the wreck.”
Janis Mackey Frayer and Dawn Liu reported from Beijing, and Peter Guo from Hong Kong.
Mahalia Dobson and The Associated Press contributed.
