Rewarding idea to restart MH370 search

The southern Indian Ocean could see a rush of maritime bounty hunters probing the depths for the wreckage of MH370.

The southern Indian Ocean could see a rush of maritime bounty hunters probing the depths for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Luke Connelly, an economist from the University of Queensland, has put forward the idea of a reward to encourage companies or even private adventurers to restart the hunt for the Boeing 777 which disappeared three years ago.

Writing in Aviation Week & Space Technology, Professor Connelly said it was understandable that the three governments involved in the underwater search had decided to suspend it after covering 120,000sq km without finding a trace of the aircraft.

“The MH370 search has cost Australia, China and Malaysia approximately $US150 million combined,” Professor Connelly wrote in the magazine. “The problem here arises because no entity is likely to benefit sufficiently from finding the aircraft to justify paying the entire cost of a renewed search, however there could be creative solutions.”

Professor Connelly said a large reward could encourage a higher level of innovation and investment in search technologies, and fishing vessels or cargo ships might be encouraged to search for MH370 on the side as they went about their normal business.

“Some companies may be enticed to invest in equipment that enables them to conduct incidental searches, perhaps in joint ventures with specialist firms that supply underwater scanning equipment,” he said.

“New vessels may be fitted with more advanced underwater scanning and detection equipment than is generally required for navigation.”

Professor Connelly said possible solutions included offering a range of bounties.

“An advantage to offering a menu of bounties, rather than a single bounty, is that it may encourage the production of information by finders of lower-value debris that encourages competition to find high-value components, such as the flight data recorder or fuselage,” Professor Connelly said.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board. Automatic satellite tracking data showed the aircraft came down in the southern Indian Ocean.

The idea of a bounty for a private exploration to find MH370 was first raised by Malaysia’s Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi.

“There will be cash rewards in the millions (of ringgit) for those who are able to find substantial information or evidence like the fuselage,” he said. One million ringgit is about $300,000.

But the more senior Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai quickly scotched the idea, telling reporters in Perth “it was the deputy minister’s personal view, not the government’s, we are not having any such decision”.