The government of Malaysia approved to resume the search for the flight plane MH370 of Malaysia Airlineswhich mysteriously disappeared ten years ago, Transport Minister Anthony Loke declared on Friday.
On March 8, 2014, the plane, a Boeing 777 that took off from Kuala Lumpur heading to Beijing with 239 people on board, disappeared mysteriously.
Despite the search operations, considered the most important in the history of aviation, the plane was never found.
“The proposal of a search operation by Ocean Infinity [empresa de exploración estadounidense] It is solid and deserves to be taken into account,” Loke told reporters.
The official indicated that on December 13, Malaysian government ministers “agreed in principle to accept the Ocean Infinity proposal.”
Ocean Infinity, a company based in the United States and the United Kingdom, to carry out the search “in a new area estimated at 15,000 km2 in the southern Indian Ocean.”
The Ministry of Transport is expected to finalize the conditions of the proposal in early 2025.
Now what’s next?
The new search will begin “as soon as the contract is finalized and signed by both parties,” Loke added.
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“We have been informed that the ideal time to search in the designated waters is between January and April. “We are working to finalize the agreement as soon as possible,” he explained.
Ocean Infinity is a company specialized in marine robotics, whose teams are mainly in Texas and England.
The Malaysian government will not pay the company anything if it does not find the plane, under the terms of the 18-month agreement, Minister Loke explained.
But if found, Malaysia will pay 70 million dollars to the company.
Kuala Lumpur already turned to this company in 2018 to search for the plane, but without obtaining results.
“The new search area proposed by Ocean Infinity is based on the latest information and data analysis carried out by experts and researchers,” according to Loke.
Despite the extensive search operation carried out by an Australian team and Ocean Infinity, only some fragments of the aircraft were found.
What happened to MH370?
The disappearance of flight MH370 of Malaysia Airlines It has always been the subject of numerous theories.
In one of them it was a deliberate act by the pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, an experienced professional who was 53 years old at the time.
A report published by Malaysia in 2018 highlighted air traffic control failures and indicated that MH370’s trajectory was changed manually.