The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will be suspended if the plane is not found in the suspected crash zone, the three-nation search team of Malaysia, Australia and China has announced.
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Asked if the suspension was due to a lack of funds – as feared by relatives of passengers – Malaysian Transport Minister Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai told reporters cost was not a factor.
Its statement on Thursday also repeated calls for a concerted global effort to find and study more debris in the western Indian Ocean.
“While acknowledging the significance of the debris, Ministers noted that to date, none of it had provided information that positively identified the precise location of the aircraft”, the statement says.
China, Malaysia and Australia had previously agreed to end the search in the southern Indian Ocean if no “credible new information” was found.
After 10 months of intensive undersea search, Malaysia declared MH370 lost January 29 2015 in an accident, killing all on board.
The search has been hampered by bad weather conditions, so Mr Liow said the work will continue until October at least.
The plane disappeared March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia- With less than 10,000 square kilometers left in the search area for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, hopes of finding the plane are fading.
But on Friday, journalist Jeff Wise who has closely covered the Flight MH370 case from the beginning, published an exclusive report in New York Magazine, again raising the possibility that Shah deliberately hijacked and destroyed the plane he was charged with flying.
Some relatives remained hopeful that the search will resume one day. “We have used the most high tech and the best people for this search”. This hypothesis, he added, is based on the assumption that the plane was being piloted when it went down.
The search for the plan has been the most expensive in aviation history, estimated at some $135 million. It is believed to have turned back west and then south before dropping into the Indian Ocean west of Australia, where the search has been concentrated.
Top researchers at the Dutch company, “Fugro”, had come up with a possible theory, saying the plane did not dive down, but rather, it glided. Australian Jeanette Maguire, who had family aboard, told AP that the announcement was “very hard to accept” but she knows more information is needed “because it’s costing an absolute fortune”.
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The flaperon, a part of the aircraft’s wing – was found on Reunion island off the coast of Madagascar.
