Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said after the tripartite meeting that the suspension of the search would not mean a complete termination, and assured that it would continue upon the discovery of new evidence.
Advertisement
The search that ensued and is ongoing, at the present time, concentrated on a wide area of 120,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian ocean, where the last signals of satellite communication between the plane and the ground station had taken place.
MH370, a Boeing 777-200 with 239 passengers and crew aboard, disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Investigators believe the plane was deliberately flown thousands of miles off course before crashing into the southern Indian Ocean off Australia.
“The best guess that we think is that it’s probably around the Broken Ridge region, which is slightly to the north of the area that they’re looking at”, Pattiaratchi said. “Ministers reiterated that the aspiration to locate MH370 has not been abandoned”.
Less than 10,000sq km of the 120,000sq km search zone remains unscoured.
The prospect of a suspended search left several family members of the MH370 victims at a loss.
But they have shed no light on where exactly the plane went down or why. Authorities said that the search will be suspended if no new evidence is found in the priority area.
The oceanographer who led American adventurer Blaine Gibson to Madagascar where he found a potential debris field from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet says drift modeling suggests that Flight 370 could have crashed north of the current search area.
Today the three main countries involved in the search agreed to suspend operations if no sign of the aircraft was found in the area now being combed.
But Jeanette Maguire, whose sister and brother-in-law Cathy and Bob Lawton, from Brisbane, Australia, were aboard Flight 370, said that while the decision is “very hard to accept”, she understood searchers needed more information to continue, “because it’s costing an absolute fortune”.
Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said every effort had been made to find the aircraft, and authorities had engaged world experts and cutting-edge technology in the hunt.
Wreckage confirmed as from MH370 has washed up on beaches in Africa but they shed little light on the mystery. More than 90 percent of the search area has already been covered.
Advertisement
Liow also stated that Malaysia has yet to received the details on the MH370 flaperon found on La Reunion island, which is now under the possession of the French government.
