Search for MH370, long missing Malaysia Airlines flight, suspended after just weeks in Indian Ocean
Kuala Lumpur
— The latest search for
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
has been suspended by maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity as it is "not the season," Malaysia's transport minister has said more than a decade after the plane went missing, and less than six weeks after the new hunt began.
"They (Ocean Infinity) have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year," Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a voice recording sent to AFP on Thursday by his aide.
Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the United States, led an unsuccessful hunt in 2018, before
agreeing to launch a new search
this year.
"Right now, it's not the season," Loke said in the recording, which was made during an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has not been found.
Loke's comments come a little over a month after authorities
said the search had resumed
, following earlier failed attempts that covered vast swaths of the Indian Ocean. An initial
Australia-led search
trawled 46,300 square miles of the Indian Ocean over three years, but found hardly any trace of the plane, with only
some pieces of debris picked up
.
"Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate," Loke said, referring to the wreckage of the plane.
Relatives of the victims had voiced hope in February that a new search could finally bring them closure.
In December, Loke said Ocean Infinity would scour a new 5,800-square-mile area of the southern Indian Ocean, chosen "based on the latest information and data analysis conducted by experts and researchers."
The most recent mission was conducted on the same "no find, no fee" principle as Ocean Infinity's previous search, with the government only obligated to pay out if the firm finds the aircraft.
The plane's disappearance has long been the subject of theories ranging from the credible to outlandish. Among the theories is the suggestion that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah could have gone rogue and crashed the plan deliberately.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the course of the plane was changed manually. Investigators said in the 495-page report that they still did not know why the plane vanished, and refused to rule out that someone other than the pilots had diverted the jet.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the others were from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere. Relatives of passengers lost on the flight have continued to demand answers from Malaysian authorities.
Family members of Chinese passengers gathered in Beijing outside government offices and the Malaysian embassy last month on the 11th anniversary of the flight's disappearance. Attendees of the gathering shouted, "Give us back our loved ones!"
Some held placards asking, "When will the 11 years of waiting and torment end?"
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