New mission may be launched to look for MH370, say reports

PETALING JAYA, Feb 9, 2020, FMT. A new mission to find the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which crashed nearly six years ago, could be launched in months, reports said, Free Malaysia Today reported.

Britain’s Mail Online said the victims’ next of kin and the Malaysian government are looking to send seabed searcher Ocean Infinity to locate the Boeing 777, which disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board.

Quoting a report by News Corp of Australia, it said officials are hoping new debris and analysis will provide investigators with a clearer priority search.

The report said 32 pieces of debris, believed to be from MH370, had been found, and one of the last discovered pieces was thought to be from the internal fin of a vortex generator.

If it is from the fin of MH370, it could determine that the engine of the aircraft shattered on impact, meaning it was not in a controlled glide when it went down, the report said.

This, it said, supports the theory the plane crashed violently, but testing of the final two pieces found was delayed for two years and have not been made public yet.

Mail Online quoted the News Corp report as saying Malaysian lawyer Grace Subathirai Nathan, who lost her mother on the flight, revealed the push for a fresh search was conducted “quietly and privately”.

“We’ve been getting things rolling so we can make an announcement (this year),”Grace was quoted as saying.

“The transport minister is open to review a proposal. We are trying to make sure that the proposal is something that is airtight and doesn’t get rejected for some vague reason, so we have been working quietly with parties involved to try and bring that to fruition.”

Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett said the Malaysian government is only committing to the search on a “no find no fee” basis, the report added.

Tags: Malaysia