MH370 search called off after three years

The search for MH370 ended yesterday without finding a trace of the aircraft, nearly three years after it disappeared.

Phoenix International's Remora 3 remotely operated vehicle being deployed on a mission in 2011.

The greatest aviation mystery of recent decades appears likely to go unsolved after the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ended yesterday without finding a trace of the aircraft, nearly three years after it disappeared.

The announcement drew immediate criticism from Voice­MH370, a group representing families of the 239 passengers and crew who died, with suspicions expressed about how determined the Malaysian govern­ment has been to find the Boeing 777.

Debate still rages in the aviation community about what caused the aircraft’s loss, with most experts insisting the search should go on to determine whether mech­anical failure or human inter­vention such as pilot hijack brought the plane down.

In a communique, Transport Minister Darren Chester and his Malaysian and Chinese counterparts said the last vessel conducting the sonar imaging survey to find MH370, the Fugro Equator of the Dutch marine exploration group contracted for the project, had left the search area in the southern Indian Ocean.

MH370 disappeared after it deviated on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, having flown back over Malaysia to the Andaman Sea and then turned south, with its radar transponder turned off and no radio communication.

The underwater phase of the search, which has cost an estimated $200 million, was funded by Australia, China and Malaysia, and has covered 120,000sq km of the southern Indian Ocean where automatic electronic satellite tracking data was thought to show the plane had come down.

The communique said: “Despite every effort using the best science available, cutting-edge technology, as well as modelling and advice from highly skilled professionals … unfortunately, the search has not been able to ­locate the aircraft.”

While a team of international experts assembled by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau last month identified what they said was a promising new potential search area to the north of the one just completed, the three governments decided in July that the hunt would not be resumed without new precise information.

“Whilst combined scientific studies have continued to refine areas of probability, to date no new information has been discovered to determine the specific location of the aircraft,” the joint communique said.

“We again take this opportunity to honour the memory of those who have lost their lives and acknowledge the enormous loss felt by their loved ones.”

Australian authorities have said Malaysia, which under international law is responsible for the investigation since the aircraft was Malaysian-registered, will have primary say in whether the search would ever be resumed.

KS Narendran, a Voice­MH370 spokesman and Chennai-based business consultant whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on MH370, last night told The Australian the group was “shocked and puzzled” by the announcement. He said “the best minds and experts” gathered by the ATSB, which led the underwater search, had determined the plane was likely to the north. “I thought it was incumbent upon them to do everything neces­sary to ensure they found the answers and to make sure the future of civil aviation safety was in good hands.”

The ATSB determined the search area based on what became known as the “ghost flight” and “death dive” theory that the pilots were unconscious at the end and the plane flew on auto­pilot before running out of fuel and crashing.

Most airline pilots and air crash investigators believe Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane and flew it to the end outside the search area identified by the ATSB.