One of three search ships withdrawn from hunt for MH370

One of three vessels is to be withdrawn from the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The Fugro Discovery encounters rough seas during its search for MH370.

The Australian government has announced the beginning of the end in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, with one of three vessels today abandoning the hunt for good.

The announcement came amid pressure in the aviation industry for the search to continue, particularly after newly revealed evidence from the FBI, first suppressed then downplayed by the governments of Malaysia and Australia, supporting the theory that MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft, and may have flown it outside the current search area.

The aircraft disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

For most of the past two years, the Dutch Fugro marine survey group has been charged by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau with conducting the underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, where automatic satellite tracking data suggests the aircraft came down.

Less than 10,000sq km of a target 120,000sq km search area remains to be surveyed.

In its weekly bulletin on the search for MH370, the federal government’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre said yesterday that the FugroDiscoveryvessel would be leaving the search area today “to undertake mandatory scheduled maintenance, bringing to an end its involvement in the search for MH370”.

The search would be ­completed by two other ships, the FugroEquatorand a Chinese vessel, the Dong Hai Jiu 101.

Since commencing search operations in October 2014, the FugroDiscoveryhasconducted 16 “swings” of about 40 days each at sea to the remote target zone, with a rotating group of about 30 scientists, sailors and technicians on board each time.