Malaysia says search for MH370 will resume this month, 11 years after packed plane disappeared without a trace

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Malaysia’s government said Wednesday that U.S. marine robotics company Ocean Infinity would soon resume searching the seabed. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370more than a decade after the plane disappeared over the Indian Ocean.

MH370, a Boeing 777, disappeared from air traffic radar 39 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014. The disappearance of the packed airliner without a trace sparked one of aviation’s most baffling mysteries.

Despite years of multinational searches, investigators still don’t know exactly what happened to the plane or its 239 passengers and crew.

The Malaysian government said on Wednesday that Ocean Infinity would resume its search starting December 30, about eight months after the last effort was abandoned. Malaysian Transport Minister announced in early April that approximately six week search by the American firm was ending, saying it was not “the season” for jobs at sea. The minister said at the time that efforts would resume towards the end of the year.

The government said Wednesday that Ocean Infinity would resume the search intermittently starting Dec. 30 for a total of 55 days, in specific areas believed to have the highest chance of finding the missing plane.

Herculean search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed, have so far turned up virtually nothing. Apart from some small fragments that washed ashore, no bodies or large remains have ever been recovered.

Below is a look at what we know about the deadly aviation tragedy.

“Good evening, Malaysian Three Seven Zero”

The pilot’s final radio call to Kuala Lumpur (a simple “Good evening, Malaysian Three Seven Zero”) was the final communication before the plane crossed Vietnamese airspace. He never communicated with the drivers there.

Minutes later, the plane’s transponder, which transmits its location, went dark. Military radar showed the plane reversed over the Andaman Sea, and satellite data suggested it continued flying for hours, possibly until fuel ran out, before crashing in a remote section of the southern Indian Ocean.

Theories about what happened range from hijacking to cabin depressurization or a power outage. There were no distress calls, rescue demands, evidence of technical failure or severe weather.

In 2018, Malaysian investigators cleared the passengers and crew but did not rule out “unlawful interference.” Authorities have said someone deliberately cut off communications and diverted the plane.

Who was on MH370 when it disappeared?

MH370 was carrying 227 passengers, including five young children, and 12 crew members. Most of the passengers were Chinese, but there were also citizens of the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia and other countries.

Among those on board were two young Iranians traveling with stolen passports, a group of Chinese calligraphy artists, 20 employees of the American technology company Freescale Semiconductor, a look-alike for actor Jet Li and several families with young children. Many families lost several members.

The largest underwater search in history

Search operations began in the South China Sea, between Malaysia and Vietnam, and then expanded to the Andaman Sea and the southern Indian Ocean.

Australia, Malaysia and China coordinated the largest underwater search in historywhich covers approximately 46,000 square miles of seabed off the western coast of Australia. Planes, sonar-equipped vessels and robotic submarines scoured the ocean searching for signs of the plane.

Signals believed to have come from the plane’s black box turned out to be from other sources and no remains were found. The first confirmed remains were a Flaperon discovered on Reunion Island in July 2015, with additional fragments It was later found along the east coast of Africa. The search was suspended in January 2017.

In 2018, American marine robotics company Ocean Infinity resumed the search under a “do not find, do not pay” agreement, focusing on areas identified through debris drift surveys, but ended without success.

Challenging search conditions in the Indian Ocean

One reason such an exhaustive search may not have turned up any clues is that no one knows exactly where to look. The Indian Ocean is the third largest in the world and the search took place in a difficult area, where researchers encountered bad weather and average depths of around 4 kilometers.

It is not common for planes to disappear into the depths of the sea, but when they do, the wreckage can be very difficult to locate. Over the past 50 years, dozens of planes have gone missing, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

The Malaysian government in March gave the green light to another “no-find, no-pay” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the seafloor search operation at a newly identified 5,800-square-mile site in the ocean. Ocean Infinity will receive $70 million for its work, but only if the remains are discovered.

It is unclear if the company has new evidence of the plane’s location. It has said it would use new technology and has worked with many experts to analyze data and narrow the search area to the most likely site.