EPAThe Malaysian cabinet approved a new search for the wreckage of the flight of Malaysia Airlines MH370, more than a decade after the disappearance of the plane.
Research will cover an area of 15,000 km2 in the Southern Indian Ocean, as part of a “No Find, No Fairs” agreement with the Infinity Ocean Exploration firm.
The company will receive $ 70 million (56 million pounds sterling) if the wreckage is found, announced the Minister of Transport Loke Siew Fook.
The MH370 flight disappeared in 2014 with 239 people on board while it was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. His disappearance is one of the greatest mysteries of the world’s aviation, which continues to haunt the families of passengers.
Despite in -depth research in the years that followed their disappeared, no wreck has been found. Previous efforts, including multinational research which costs $ 150 million (120 million pounds sterling), ended in 2017.
The governments of the three nations involved – Malaysia, Australia and China – said that research would only be “if new credible evidence should emerge” from the location of the plane.
A 2018 search for the wreckage by Ocean Infinity in similar terms ended without success after three months.
In December, the government of Malaysia in principle agreed to resume research. However, the final negotiations were only completed until March.
On Wednesday, the final approval of Malaysia will now allow you to start.
Loke said in a statement: “The government has committed to continuing research operations and proposing the closure of the families of MH370 passengers.”
The MH370 flight took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of March 8, 2014. Less than an hour after takeoff, it lost communication with air traffic control, and Radar showed that it had deviated from its planned flight trajectory.
Investigators generally agree that the plane crashed somewhere in the south of the Indian Ocean, although the reason for the accident is not clear.
Tips of debris, supposed to be the plane, have been washed on the banks of the Indian Ocean in the years that followed his disappearance.
Getty imagesThe disappearance of the plane gave birth to a multitude of conspiracy theories, including speculation that the pilot had deliberately killed the plane and said that he had been shot by a foreign army.
A 2018 investigation into the disappearance of the plane revealed that orders from the plane were probably deliberately manipulated to remove it, but did not draw any conclusion behind.
Investigators said at the time that “the answer can only be conclusive if the wreck is found”.
Passengers included people of more than a dozen countries: a little less than two thirds were Chinese nationals, followed by 38 Malaysians, with others from Australia, Indonesia, India, France, Ukraine, the United States and several other nations.
Members of the MH370 Chinese passenger family, missing, met Beijing officials earlier in March to discuss the renewed research of the wreckage and express their hopes for independent research. Some relatives expressed their frustration in the face of a lack of direct communication from Malaysian authorities.
“It was promised that we would be immediately informed [but] We can only discover this kind of news online, “said Li Eryou, a 68 -year -old father who lost his 29 -year -old son.
“Many families do not even know how to access this information, so they do not know completely,” he told AFP.
Getty imagesDeuil families gathered in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the disappearance of the flight earlier this month, singing: “Give us our loved ones!”
Cheng Liping, whose husband was in Malaysia for a film shoot and had returned to China on MH370, said that she hoped that Beijing would communicate more with Malaysia to discover the truth.
“Everyone has been trapped in pain,” she told journalists. “What happened exactly is still unknown.”
The new research has caused mixed reactions of passenger families when announced in December – some calling it a step towards closing, while others describing the news as a bit bitter.
