Malaysia’s transport minister announced on Wednesday that the country has reached an agreement with an undersea exploration company to recommence the hunt for the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
One of the biggest aviation mysteries in history occurred in 2014 when Flight MH370, a Boeing 777, disappeared while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
According to Minister Loke Siew Fook, the decision will allow seabed search activities to begin on a “no find, no fee” basis in a new area in the southern Indian Ocean that is estimated to cover 5,790 square miles.
If the wreckage is found, Ocean Infinity, an exploration outfit, will get $70 million, he claimed.
In a statement, Loke added, “The government is committed to continuing the search operation and providing closure for the families of the MH370 passengers.”
In December, the government announced that it had accepted Ocean Infinity’s request to relaunch the search for MH370 in principle.
The company had made two unsuccessful attempts to find the plane during its most recent search, which ended in 2018.
Based on information from automatic links between an Inmarsat satellite and the aircraft, those followed an underwater search conducted by China, Malaysia, and Australia in a 120,000 sq km (46,332 sq mile) region of the southern Indian Ocean.
Despite the lack of a documented agreement with the government, ship tracking data indicated that late last month, a ship was sent to the Indian Ocean search zone to search for the missing jet.
The duration of the search contract with Ocean Infinity was not immediately known. In the past, Loke has stated that it would span 18 months.
It follows a warning from experts that the MH370 hunt “could turn catastrophic very, very quickly.”
Peter Waring, a former Australian naval officer, described the search technology as state-of-the-art.
“What these new Ocean Infinity vessels represent, quite frankly, is as big a transition in maritime technology as the movement from sail to steam in the 1800s,” he told 60 Minutes.
“It represents a significant advancement in maritime technology.”
In the open ocean, where waves as high as 20 meters have been observed in the new search area, the equipment can only carry searchers so far.
“There’s absolutely no shelter out there and there’s nowhere to hide,” Mr Waring warned.
“You’re six or seven days away from the nearest port, which is Perth”
“These are dangerous conditions, if something goes wrong, it will turn catastrophic very, very quickly.”
Following a botched attempt in 2018, this is Ocean Infinity’s second attempt to locate the wreckage.
“We’ve been here before, there’s been lots of searches in the past,” Mr Waring said.
“There’s been lots of promises made and I’m really hoping this time that we find the aircraft and that we can put it all to rest.”
“This is a mystery that really tears at the fabric of reality, and maybe it’ll stitch it back together again slightly.”
Craig Wallace, an electrical engineer and deep-sea diver, also cautioned about the harsh circumstances.
“The Indian Ocean that they’re working in is, is among the worst in the world,” he said.
“They’ve recorded wave heights of 20 meters, so 60 feet. It’s extreme conditions and there will be a lot of times where they simply cannot launch or recover the vehicle.”
It is thought that Ocean Infinity determined their search area by using the weather along the flight paths on the night and morning of March 8, 2014, the projected location of the seventh arc, and the aircraft’s performance parameters.
The recovery specialists will also take into account oceanic modeling and satellite data regarding the likely routes taken by the 37 salvaged airplane parts that have washed ashore as far away as Madagascar and Mauritius.
Mike Glynn, a former pilot with the RAAF and Qantas, claimed that other data used in the inquiry was deceptive.
According to him, the technique, which was created by a former aerospace engineer, depended on radio signal anomalies detected by a process called tracking of weak signal propagation reporters.
“The theory says if you track all links with anomalies in them, you can track where the aircraft went, but you can’t,” he told the Australian.
“These links are tens of thousands of kilometres long and there’s no identification of the aircraft that went through. All you get is an anomaly in the signal which can be caused by a lot of things.”
According to him, the Malaysian authorities was optimistic that the idea would lead to proof that would enable them to get closer to the MH370 wreckage.
“It’s absolutely not and it will lead to another [search] failure,” Mr Glynn said.
According to Mr. Glynn, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah initially intended for the flight to be a mass murder-suicide.
Jurisdiction over discovered wreckage is still up in the air.
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