‘Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,’ the country’s transport minister says.
Malaysia’s government said Friday it would resume the search of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared more than a decade ago.
The plane vanished as it was traveling to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, in March 2014 in now what is described as one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history. The plane, a Boeing 777, had 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
“Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin,” Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a press conference on Friday. “We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families.”
Loke said in a statement that a private company, Ocean Infinity, came up with a new proposal to resume the search in the southern portion of the Indian Ocean. The company in 2018 had searched for the aircraft and wasn’t successful, after a multinational search failed to turn up clues about the plane’s whereabouts.
“The proposed new search area, identified by Ocean Infinity, is based on the latest information and data analyses conducted by experts and researchers. The company’s proposal is credible,” he said.
About 17 days after the plane went missing, Malaysia’s prime minister at the time said the aircraft crashed in a remote section of the Indian Ocean. A cavass of the area did not result in the plane being located.
Flight MH370’s last transmission was about 40 minutes after it departed Kuala Lumpur, while the pilots signed off as the plane entered Vietnamese air space over the Gulf of Thailand, and soon after its transponder was turned off.
Military radar had shown the plane left its flight path to fly back over northern Malaysia then out into the Andaman Sea before turning south, then all contact with the jetliner was lost. Some debris, which has been confirmed to be from the plane, has washed up along the African coast and in some Indian Ocean islands.
Of the passengers on the plane, more than 150 of them were Chinese nationals. Many relatives have demanded compensation from Boeing, Malaysia Airlines, and other parties since the disappearance.
