By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-04-03 08:37:38 | Updated at 2025-04-04 21:40:35
1 day ago
KUALA LUMPUR - The latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been suspended as it is “not the season”, Kuala Lumpur’s Transport Minister said, more than a decade after the plane went missing.
“They have stopped the operation for the time being, they will resume the search at the end of this year,” Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a voice recording sent to AFP on April 3 by his aide.
“Right now, it’s not the season,” Mr Loke said in the recording, which was made during an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on April 2.
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has not been found.
Mr Loke’s comments come a little over a month after the authorities said the search had resumed, following earlier failed attempts that covered vast swathes of the Indian Ocean.
An initial Australia-led search covered 120,000 sq km in the Indian Ocean over three years, but found hardly any trace of the plane other than a few pieces of debris.
Maritime exploration firm Ocean Infinity, based in Britain and the US, led an unsuccessful hunt in 2018 before agreeing to launch a new search in 2025.
“Whether or not it will be found will be subject to the search, nobody can anticipate,” Mr Loke said, referring to the wreckage of the plane.
Aviation mystery
Mr Loke said in December 2024 that a new 15,000 sq km area of the southern Indian Ocean would be scoured by Ocean Infinity.
The most recent mission was conducted on the same “no find, no fee” principle as Ocean Infinity’s previous search, with the government paying out only if the firm finds the aircraft.
The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of theories – ranging from the credible to outlandish – including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
A final report into the tragedy released in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the course of the plane was changed manually.
Investigators said in the 495-page report that they still did not know why the plane vanished, and refused to rule out that someone other than the pilots had diverted the jet.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the others were from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere.
Relatives of passengers lost on the flight have continued to demand answers from the Malaysian authorities.
Family members of Chinese passengers gathered in Beijing outside government offices and the Malaysian embassy in March on the 11th anniversary of the flight’s disappearance.
Attendees of the gathering shouted: “Give us back our loved ones.”
Some held placards asking: “When will the 11 years of waiting and torment end?” AFP
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