The Malaysian government has accepted to a proposal by maritime company Ocean Infinity to perform another “no-find, no-fee” search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which went missing after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing over ten years ago.
Multiple searches for the aircraft have been futile, while parts of the Boeing 777 have been discovered washed up.
Malaysia accepts new MH370 search proposal
According to Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke, the country has agreed in principle to Ocean Infinity’s second proposal to conduct a new search for the missing Boeing 777, which is thought to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Ocean Infinity was the last group to search for the aircraft in 2018, but the jet’s primary wreckage remains elusive.
With bits of the plane washing up in various sites in the Indian Ocean and East Africa, all 239 passengers and crew are assumed dead. Ocean Infinity’s proposal is predicated on a no-find, no-fee approach, which means it will receive nothing if its search is unsuccessful, but $70 million if it is successful. As Loke explained,
“The Cabinet has agreed in principle to accept Ocean Infinity’s proposal to resume the search for MH370’s wreckage in a new search area estimated at 15,000km (9,320 miles) per square based on the no-find-no-fee principle. This means the government will not have to pay unless the wreckage is found.”
According to Loke, the expanded search area is “based on the most recent information and data analysis conducted by experts and researchers.”
Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett stated earlier this year that the company’s technological capabilities had improved greatly since its previous search, and that it had been working with a number of experts to determine a likely crash site.
The agreement with Ocean Infinity is currently being negotiated and will most likely be completed in early 2025; much of the negotiation revolves around defining what exactly constitutes “wreckage,” as finding one or two fragments of the airplane differs from identifying its whole wreckage.
With the contract set to run approximately 18 months, the marine exploration firm has stated that the period between January and April is the optimal search window.
Relatives of those onboard MH370 have welcomed the announcement, with Loke stating that the new search will hopefully provide “closure for the families of MH370 passengers.”
With the bulk of passengers on board being Chinese nationals, a Chinese court initiated compensation proceedings late last year.
Tracking down the wreckage
The prevailing belief is that MH370’s disappearance was deliberately planned by the flight’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who was having marital issues, but alternative plausible explanations have been proposed, including a cabin depressurization event.
While investigators suspect the plane’s transponder was turned off manually and its controls altered to generate a new route, they state that the reasons for this “can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found.”
Multiple search activities have been conducted to locate the aircraft’s last resting place and obtain access to its critical Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), which will throw light on what really happened.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) spearheaded a $150 million search operation that spanned over 120,000 square kilometers and lasted nearly three years, however it proved unsuccessful.
Then, in 2018, Ocean Infinity conducted its first search across a 112,000-square-kilometer area but was unable to locate the crashed jet.