Search for missing MH370 to resume — RT World News

Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke has promised to resume the search for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 “as soon as possible.” The Boeing 777 disappeared from radar screens in 2014, and is presumed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Speaking at a memorial ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, Loke told relatives of the 239 passengers and crew who disappeared that the Malaysian government was still there. “We are committed to finding this plane.”

“As I stand before you, making this promise, I will do my best to obtain the evidence, and sign a new contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the research as soon as possible.” Luke said, according to the Malay Mail.

Ocean Infinity is a Texas-based marine robotics company that scanned the Indian Ocean for traces of the plane in 2018. Nothing was found and the mission was canceled six months later. Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett announced last year that the company had found new evidence pointing to a possible crash site, and said he had petitioned the Malaysian government for permission to conduct new research.

Locke said Sunday that he has instructed officials to meet with Ocean Infinity to discuss a “No search, no fee suggestion.” By the company.

“Although there is no fee, we expect that if we start concluding a contract with Ocean Infinity, we hope that the aircraft will be found.” He said.

MH370 was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it lost contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea. The plane disappeared from secondary radar screens – which display the plane's position and transponder data – but was tracked by the Malaysian military's main radar for another hour, which showed it banking sharply to the west and flying back over the Malay Peninsula towards the Andaman Sea.

As MH370 continued to fly for another six hours, the malfunctioning satellite data unit made repeated attempts to log into the communications network operated by the British company Inmarsat. A team of international investigators led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were able to deduce the plane's approximate flight path from the time it took for these signals to travel from the plane to the satellite, concluding that it likely flew into the southern Indian Ocean until it ran out. of fuel.

Malaysian police later discovered that the plane's pilot, Zahiri Ahmad Shah, had been practicing flying the Boeing 777 deep in the Indian Ocean on a simulator before it disappeared. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Sky News in 2020 that “From a very, very, very early time, [the Malaysian government] I thought it was a murder-suicide by the pilot.

In the years since MH370's disappearance, suspected plane wreckage has washed ashore in South Africa, Mozambique, Mauritius and the French department of Reunion.

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