Kuala Lumpur had previously announced this year that it had reached an agreement with Ocean Infinity, a robotics company that specializes in such searches and reportedly offered an agreement in which it would not charge for the search until it found evidence of the missing plane. The government made the initial announcement in March, during the Southern Hemisphere fall, so it could not begin the search at the time due to inclement weather.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, 2014, and was never seen again. It was destined to land in Beijing, China, carrying 239 people. The search for the plane yielded minimal results, including several discoveries of small debris that officials believed were parts of a plane and could otherwise not be accounted for. These discoveries spanned across the Indian Ocean into Africa, however, and never yielded a final resting site for the plane or its passengers. The disappearance remains unsolved over a decade later.
The Malaysian Transport Ministry suggested on Wednesday that it was optimistic about the new search because cutting-edge technology had allowed Ocean Infinity to narrow down the search area much more than authorities were able to in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance. The search area lies deep within the Indian Ocean in areas thousands of miles from civilization where establishing bases of operations is difficult.
“The search will be conducted intermittently in targeted areas assessed to have the highest probability of locating the aircraft, in line with the service agreement signed between the Government of Malaysia and Ocean Infinity on March 25 this year,” the Transport Ministry confirmed on Wednesday, according to the Malaysia Star.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke explained to reporters on Wednesday why the search could not start immediately, although the Malaysian government had been dealing with Ocean Infinity for some time.
“I don’t think it’s the right season now. I believe they have paused operations for the time being and will resume the search at the end of this year,” he said.
Multiple Malaysian outlets reported that the search would begin on December 30.
The news this week builds on a flurry of reports in March that the government of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had begun revamping the search, collaborating with international authorities. The New Straits Times reported at the time that American and Australian officials had agreed to send experts to Malaysia to continue looking for MH370.
“In a statement marking the 11th anniversary of the aircraft’s disappearance, the Transport Ministry said the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau are assisting in the search, led by UK-based exploration firm Ocean Infinity,” the Times noted.
Reports about the collaboration with Ocean Infinity, citing the Transport Ministry, suggested that the agreement with Kuala Lumpur would only require Malaysian taxpayers to pay for the search once the plane was found — a “no find, no fee” agreement. If Ocean Infinity succeeds in finding the plane, reports indicate that Malaysia will pay the company $70 million.
Ocean Infinity is returning to the search after aiding several governments in searching between January and May 2018. The process of restoring the search began in 2023, but reports this year first suggested that Ocean Infinity had reason to believe it had found an interesting anomaly in the water. The New Straits Times noted this week that, in February, reports stated that “marine tracking websites indicated the company’s deep-water support vessel, Armada 7806, had reached the new search zone — approximately 1,931km off Perth, Australia.”
The disappearance of MH370 was a massive international news story in its day and remains one of the largest unsolved mysteries in the history of aviation. It caused significant tensions between the governments of Malaysia and China, as many of the passengers on the plane were Chinese and their families condemned the Malaysian government for not doing enough to find their loved ones. In August 2015, a mob of relatives of the MH370 passengers stormed the Malaysian embassy in Beijing — an act unlikely to occur in the repressive communist nation without some government support — demanding the Malaysian government give them more information and involve them more in the search. At the time, investigators had made the first — and, as of press time, still last — major break in the case: the discovery of a flaperon believed to belong to the plane on the French island of Réunion in July 2015. After that discovery, another piece of debris was discovered near Mozambique, and several unconfirmed pieces of debris have been documented, but none have led to the discovery of where the plane and its passengers ultimately ended up.
A major point of contention regarding the investigation was the identity and history of the flight’s pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Authorities under then-Prime Minister Najib Razak revealed days after the disappearance that the pilot apparently shut down communications on the flight on purpose. In 2016, reports surfaced that Shah’s flight simulator included at least one flight path that led directly into the middle of the Indian Ocean, with no visible landing site. The Malaysian government confirmed those reports but claimed that one flight route was among thousands programmed into the simulator.
Shah left a social media footprint indicating he was a vocal opponent of the incumbent government at the time and supporter of Anwar Ibrahim, then widely considered a political prisoner, serving a sentence on charges of “sodomy.” Some reports described him as a “fanatical” Ibrahim supporter.
In 2020, the former prime minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, said in an interview that the Nijak Razak government strongly believed that the pilot had engaged in a murder-suicide.
“My very clear understanding, from the very top levels of the Malaysian government is that from very, very early on, they thought it was murder-suicide by the pilot,” he stated plainly. “I’m not going to say who said what to whom, but let me reiterate, I want to be absolutely crystal clear, it was understood at the highest levels that this was almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot.”
Nijak Razak ultimately lost the prime ministership in a messy corruption scandal, giving way to the brief return of 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamed, an avowed antisemite, to the helm of the country. Mahathir stepped down in 2020 and Anwar Ibrahim eventually left prison and, in 2022, became prime minister himself. He remains the incumbent head of government and, as a result, is in charge of the search for the missing plane.
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