Saturday, December 21, 2024 - Malaysia’s government has agreed in principle to resume the search for the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, more than 10 years after it disappeared in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries, the country’s transport minister announced.
MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew,
vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the proposal to search
a new area in the southern Indian Ocean came from exploration firm Ocean
Infinity, which had also conducted the last search for the plane that ended in
2018.
The firm will receive $70 million if wreckage found is
substantive, Loke told a press conference.
“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the
next of kin,” he said.
“We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will
be found and give closure to the families.”
Malaysian investigators initially did not rule out the
possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course.
Debris, some confirmed and some believed to be from the
aircraft, has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian
Ocean.
More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, with
relatives demanding compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft
engine maker Rolls-Royce and the Allianz insurance group among others.
Malaysia engaged Ocean Infinity in 2018 to search in the
southern Indian Ocean, offering to pay up to $70 million if it found the plane,
but it failed on two attempts.
That followed an underwater search by Malaysia, Australia
and China in a 120,000 square kilometre (46,332 sq mile) area of the southern
Indian Ocean, based on data from automatic connections between an Inmarsat
satellite and the plane.
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