MH370

Dec. 3 (UPI) — The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will resume late this month after being suspended in March due to poor weather, the government said Wednesday.

In a statement to local media, Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport said the search will resume Dec. 30 and be conducted on an intermittent basis.

“The search operation will focus on the target area that is considered to have the highest probability of detecting the plane, in line with the service agreement signed between the Kingdom of Malaysia and Ocean Infinity on March 25, 2025,” it said.

Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity was contracted to conduct the 55-day search for the Malaysia Airlines at a rate of $70 million, which will be paid only if the Boeing 777 plane is found. The aircraft is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

The announcement by the ministry follows Ocean Infinity confirming to the government that it would resume the seabed search operation, which had been called off over earlier this year over weather.

The search is over an estimated 15,000 square Kilometers of the Indian Ocean.

There have been at least two earlier attempts to find Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared not long after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

New search to start on December 30 for Boeing 777 that went missing in 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members.

Efforts to solve one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries will resume later this month when the search continues for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the country’s Ministry of Transport said.

The aircraft, a Boeing 777, was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished from radars shortly after takeoff on March 8, 2014 from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing, China.

“The search will focus on targeted areas assessed to have the highest probability of locating the aircraft,” the Transport Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The ministry said the renewed search effort “underscores the Government of Malaysia’s commitment to providing closure to the families affected by the tragedy”, according to the official Bernama news agency.

Two-thirds of passengers on the ill-fated flight were Chinese, while the others were from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and elsewhere.

Flight investigators said in a 495-page report into the disappearance that they did not know why the plane had vanished and refused to rule out the possibility that someone other than the pilots had diverted the jet from its scheduled route.

Satellite data showed the plane diverted from its flight path and headed south, to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have run out of fuel and crashed.

Initially, an Australia-led search operation scoured 120,000sq km (46,300sq miles) of ocean over three years, but only some pieces of possible debris were found along the coastlines in East African and Indian Ocean countries, including Mozambique, Madagascar and Reunion Island.

The most recent search for MH370 wrapped up in early April due to bad weather after several weeks of fruitless underwater reconnaissance by the maritime exploration company Ocean Infinity.

Ocean Infinity, which also led an unsuccessful search in 2018, will restart its hunt for the missing airliner on December 30, Bernama reported.

Malaysia’s government agreed in March to a “no-find, no-fee” contract with the United Kingdom and United States-based Ocean Infinity to resume a seabed search operation at a new 15,000sq km (5,800sq miles) site in the Indian Ocean, The Associated Press news agency reported.

Ocean Infinity will be paid a $70m fee only if substantial amounts of plane wreckage are discovered.

Relatives of the passengers and crew have lobbied for years for the hunt to continue and have demanded compensation from Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce, and the Allianz insurance group, among others.