Malaysia agrees to launch a new search for Flight MH370, which disappeared a decade ago with 239 people on board.

Malaysia announced on Friday that it had agreed to launch a new search for… Malaysia Airlines flight MH370which disappeared 10 years ago in one of aviation’s greatest enduring mysteries.

The plane was a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board disappear From the radar screens on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane was never found. The Malaysian Prime Minister said 17 days after the plane disappeared that his government had done so based on satellite data He concluded that the plane crashed In a remote corner of the Indian Ocean, there were no survivors.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Malaysia had agreed to a new search operation by the offshore exploration company Infinity oceanWhich also carried out a failed manhunt in 2018.

The company’s first efforts followed a large-scale Australian-led search for the plane that lasted three years before it was suspended in January 2017.

Locke said a new 5,800-square-mile area in the southern Indian Ocean will be surveyed by Ocean Infinity, which is based in the United Kingdom and the United States.

“The new research area proposed by Ocean Infinity is based on the latest information and data analysis conducted by experts and researchers,” Luke said.

He told reporters, “The proposal for the search operation carried out by Ocean Infinity is a strong proposal and deserves study.”

The government said it approved Ocean Infinity’s proposal “in principle” on December 13, and the Department for Transport is expected to finalize the terms by early 2025.

Locke said the new search would resume “once the contract is finalized and signed by both parties.”

He added, “They informed us that the ideal time to search in the designated waters is between January and April. We are working to finalize the agreement as quickly as possible.”

Malaysian Rosella Abu Samah, 60, the stepmother of one of the passengers, told AFP: “I really hope that there will be an end to the loss of plane MH370. I hope that all questions will be answered.”

Malaysian Shim Kok Chow (49 years old), whose wife was a flight attendant on the ill-fated flight, said he came to accept its fate but hoped to know what happened to the plane, “why it happened and who did it.”

Among the other victims was a famous group of 24 Chinese calligraphy artists, coming from an exhibition of their works. Two young Iranians on the plane, 18-year-old Boria Noor Mohammad Mehrdad and 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, were traveling with stolen passports seeking a better life in Europe.

Two of the US citizens on board were young children, Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2.

Philip Wood was the only one American adult on board. The IBM executive was living in Beijing and was planning to move to the Malaysian capital with his girlfriend, Sarah Bajik.

“No research and no fees”

The new search will be on the same “no search, no fee” principle as the previous search by Ocean Infinity, with the government only paying if it finds the plane.

Luke said the contract is for 18 months and Malaysia will pay $70 million to the company if the plane is found.

He added that the decision to approve a new search “reflects the Malaysian government’s commitment to continuing the search process and providing a solution to the families of the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.”

The original search operation led by Australia covered an area of ​​120,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean, but did not find any trace of the plane, and only some pieces of debris were captured.

In July 2015, a plane later crashed It was confirmed to be flaperon The ill-fated plane MH370 was found on the beach of Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean. This was the first conclusive evidence that the plane had crashed in the area. More wreckage was later found on the coast of East Africa.

The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories, including this one Veteran pilot Zahari Ahmad Shah He’s gone rogue.

A final report on the tragedy issued in 2018 pointed to failures in air traffic control and said the plane’s course had been manually changed.

In response to a question whether he was confident that the plane would be found during the new search, Luke said: “At this stage, no one can give guarantees.

“It has been more than 10 years, and it would be unfair to expect a concrete commitment. However, under the terms and conditions, any discovery must be credible. It cannot be just a few parts; there are specific criteria spelled out in the contract.”