(NewsNation) — A new search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could begin soon off Western Australia’s coast nearly a decade after the aircraft’s disappearance became one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, NCA Newswire reported.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced that the government is in advanced negotiations with U.S.-based Ocean Infinity to search for a “no find, no fee” arrangement that could cost up to $104 million if successful.
The marine exploration company has identified a new search zone of 15,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean, approximately 562 kilometers west of Perth and just 30 kilometers from the previous search area, 9 news reported.
“The search operation recommendation by Ocean Infinity is a strong and credible recommendation,” Loke told Malaysia’s parliament last week. The proposal is based on new data analysis from experts and researchers, he said.
Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, shortly after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people aboard. The Boeing 777’s last satellite signal suggested it went down in waters west of Perth.
Previous search efforts have proven unsuccessful despite being the most expensive in aviation history. From 2015 to 2017, debris from the aircraft washed up on several Indian Ocean coastlines, including Reunion Island, Mozambique, Tanzania and Mauritius.
Ocean Infinity conducted its first six-month search in 2018 but found nothing after scanning more than 200,000 square kilometers of ocean floor.
The new search proposal requires Malaysian Cabinet approval before proceeding. Under the agreement terms, Ocean Infinity would receive no payment if the aircraft isn’t found.
What to know about MH370’s disappearance
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from air control radar 39 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
The pilot sent a last radio call to Kuala Lumpur before leaving Malaysia — “Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero” — but failed to check in with air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh City when the plane crossed into Vietnam’s airspace.
Minutes later, the plane’s transponder — a communication system that transmits the plane’s location to air traffic control — shut down. Military radar saw the plane turn around to travel over the Andaman Sea before it vanished, and satellite data showed it continued to fly for hours, possibly until it ran out of fuel. The plane is believed to have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.
Theories about what happened on board range from hijacking to a loss of oxygen in the cabin to power failure. But there was no distress call, no ransom demand, nor bad weather or evidence of technical failures. Malaysian safety investigators cleared all on board in a 2018 report, but didn’t rule out “unlawful interference.”
Malaysia’s government has said that someone intentionally severed communications with the ground and diverted the plane.
Who was in MH370?
The plane carried 227 passengers, including five young children, as well as 12 crew members. Most of those aboard were from China, but there were also people from other countries, including the United States, Indonesia, France and Russia.
The passengers included two young Iranian men using stolen passports to seek a new life in Europe; a group of Chinese calligraphy artists returning from an exhibition of their work; 20 employees of U.S. tech firm Freescale Semiconductor; a stunt double for actor Jet Li; families with young children; and a Malaysian couple on a long-delayed honeymoon. Many families lost multiple members in the tragedy.
What has been done to find MH370?
Dozens of ships and aircraft from various countries began the search between Malaysia and Vietnam in the South China Sea, before moving to the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Australia, alongside Malaysia and China, then led the largest and most expensive underwater search ever undertaken, covering some 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed off western Australia, using aircraft, vessels equipped to pick up sonar signals, and robotic submarines.
Search vessels detected ultrasonic signals that might have been from the plane’s black box and shipwrecks believed to be 19th century merchant vessels, but never found the plane. In July 2015, a fragment later confirmed to be a flaperon from Flight 370 was found on France’s Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean, the first hard evidence that MH370 ended its flight in the Indian Ocean. Several more pieces of debris were later found washed ashore on the east coast of Africa. The search was suspended in January 2017.
U.S. marine robotics company Ocean Infinity picked up the search in January 2018 under a “no find, no fee” contract with Malaysia, focusing on an area north of the earlier search identified by a debris drift study.
Why is the search for MH370 so hard?
One reason why such an extensive search fails to turn up clues is that no one knows exactly where to look. The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest, and the search was conducted in a difficult area, where searchers encountered bad weather and average depths of around 4 kilometers (2.5 miles).
It’s not common for planes to disappear in the deep sea, but when they do remains can be very hard to locate. Over the past 50 years, dozens of planes have vanished, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
