Malaysia announced a U.S.-based marine robotics firm will spearhead a renewed effort to find a plane that is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean over a decade ago.
Malaysian transport ministry officials said Wednesday that Ocean Infinity will search intermittently for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 beginning Dec. 30 for a total of 55 days. The flight, MH370, which carried 239 passengers and crew, mysteriously went off radar in 2014, prompting international scrutiny and speculation surrounding its disappearance.
“The latest development underscores the government of Malaysia’s commitment in providing closure to the families affected by this tragedy,” ministry officials said.
Ocean Infinity initially carried out a search operation in 2018 but found nothing of note. The company’s CEO, Oliver Punkett, said last year that the company had improved its technology since that effort, according to the Associated Press.
Prior to Ocean Infinity’s investigation, Malaysia, China, and Australia coordinated the largest underwater search for the plane in history. But that operation was called off after turning up similarly disappointing results, apart from some debris that was discovered on Réunion Island in July 2015, and additional fragments later found along the east coast of Africa.
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar around 39 minutes after taking off for Beijing on a flight departing from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Most passengers were Chinese, but there were also citizens from the United States, Indonesia, France, and Russia.
Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the Indian Ocean. Search operations have been focused primarily on probing the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.
In 2020, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Malaysian government had long suspected that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah carried out an act of mass murder-suicide, intentionally flying the plane off course and crashing it into the Indian Ocean.
“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,” Abbott said. “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.”
Abbott’s statement contradicts the findings of the official investigation into the missing flight. The report, which was led by the Malaysian government and released in 2018 by Dr. Kok Soo Chon, was largely inconclusive but determined that the “event” was likely “not committed by the pilot.”
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“We have examined the pilot and the first officer, and we are quite satisfied with their background, with their training, with their mental health,” Kok said during a press conference at the time. “We are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”
He added that some evidence that “points irresistibly to unlawful interference” that led to the flight’s disappearance.