Underwater drone armada to search ocean floor for MH370
An armada of sophisticated underwater drones is to resume the search for MH370, the Malaysian airliner that vanished nearly 11 years ago.
An armada of sophisticated underwater drones is to resume the search for MH370, the Malaysian airliner that vanished nearly 11 years ago.
The Malaysian government has accepted a proposal for a new search for the remains of the Boeing 777, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew. The American deep-sea search company Ocean Infinity will employ underwater drones and other advanced technology.
Anthony Loke, the Malaysian transport minister, said the firm would search a 15,000sq km area off the coast of western Australia.
No precise location for the new search area has been given. The company has an 18-month contract to work on a “no find, no fee” basis, but if substantive wreckage of MH370 is found it will receive $US70m.
More than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight, which vanished soon after taking off from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, for what should have been a six-hour overnight journey to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
The aircraft was tracked by radar as it reversed course and flew south over the Indian Ocean, far off Western Australia, before crashing.
Also on board were 50 Malaysians as well as French, Australian, Indonesian, Indian, US, Ukrainian and Canadian citizens.
Nearly 40 pieces of debris from the aircraft, including a large wing component, have washed up on coastlines around the southern Indian Ocean, but the remainder has not been found.
Ocean Infinity previously conducted a fruitless underwater search for the aircraft in a 25,000sq km area of ocean in 2018. Based on new information, it wants to narrow the hunt.
Experts have said the plans rely, in part, on new aircraft tracking technologies that promise to more accurately locate the airliner’s last flight position. Pioneered by Richard Godfrey, a British aerospace engineer, it analyses historical records of the interaction between an aircraft fuselage and radio signals that criss-cross the globe.
The company is likely to have learnt from the wealth of data from previous searches and the modelling of ocean currents that carried recovered debris.
Peter Foley, the Australian government official who led the first underwater search for the airliner – conducted by the Dutch ocean search company Fugro between May 2014 and January 2017 – welcomed the news.
Mr Foley, who helped Ocean Infinity make the case for the new search, said: “Well, obviously I’m overjoyed. I mean, we can’t find MH370 unless we look.”
Ocean Infinity said it had “refined” where MH370 might be and had improved its underwater search capabilities. Oliver Plunkett, its chief executive, said: “By working with a range of experts, some outside of Ocean Infinity, and ongoing analysis, we have refined our understanding of where MH370 may be.”
The company recently launched the first of a fleet of 255ft-long vessels that carry unmanned robotic drones designed to search, film and capture data from the deep ocean floor.
After MH370 disappeared, Malaysia, China and Australia conducted a joint search in a 120,000sq km area in the southern Indian Ocean but it ended in 2017 after failing to find the plane.
Relatives of passengers aboard MH370 welcomed the search. “Feels like the best Christmas present ever,” Jacquita Gonzales, wife of Patrick Gomes, the in-flight supervisor on MH370, told the New Straits Times.
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