A British-led search for MH370 has been launched in what is likely to be the final search for the plane that vanished over a decade.
Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 made headlines across the world when it disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.
Since then the aircraft has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries with most of the wreckage still missing.
Now a British marine robotics company has started a six week excavation of the Indian Ocean, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Ocean Infinity has begun scouring the seabed in an attempt to find the plane and the company’s deep-water support vessel, Armada 7806, is now searching a new area of the vast Indian Ocean.
Once the autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is deployed it is operated via satellite link from Southampton and can carry out detailed scands of the ocean floor.
The Armada 7806 will explore three or four ‘hotspots’ where researchers believe the plane might be located.
This new mission comes after the Malaysian government indicated last December that it was willing to support new searches to find the jet.
Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 made headlines across the world when it disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board. Since then the aircraft has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries with most the wreckage still missing (file image)
An Ocean Infinity ship. The company has begun scouring the seabed in an attempt to find the plane and the company’s deep-water support vessel, Armada 7806, is now searching a new area of the vast Indian Ocean (file image)
The government said at the time it had given outline approval to a ‘no find, no fee’ deal in which Ocean Infinity would be paid £55m only if it found the aircraft.
Although no formal agreement was announced, it is understood the company chose to go ahead with the plan on its own account before the arrival of winter in the southern hemisphere.
As the search is likely to be the final one, the effort could go on for longer than six weeks, weather permitting.
The flight disappeared during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing after it diverted from its intended flight route and flew south-west across the Malay peninsula towards the Indian Ocean before it vanished from the radar range.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, which combed 46,332 square miles of the sea floor of the southern Indian Ocean, only a few fragments of the Boeing 777-200ER plane have been found, scattered on beaches thousands of miles apart.
In recent years search efforts have been focused on an arc of the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia, along which the jet is thought to have come down based on regular signals exchanged between the aircraft and an Inmarsat communications satellite.
The Armada 7806 will concentrate its first search on an area researchers believe was overlooked.
A second area is located is around 1000 nautical miles south on the assumption that MH370 may have travelled further than previously thought before running out of fuel.
Visitors are writing messages at the Day of Remembrance for MH370 on March 8 2024. If the plane is found the Malaysian government will likely come under huge pressure from foreign governments and relatives of the missing passengers to go ahead with the recovery mission
A third search area is based on extrapolations of the jet’s final position based on how it may have interfered with transmissions from ham radio operations and another area identified by the University of Western Australia might also be searched.
The search area is relatively small spanning around 5,800 sq miles but Richard Godfrey – a retired aerospace engineer who has worked with Nasa – said the likelihood of finding MH370 was ’50-50′.
Speaking to the Telegraph he said: ‘People think the seabed is smooth but really it’s a horrible place.
‘It’s covered in canyons and cliffs, seamounts and volcanoes, pitch black with huge pressure and temperatures only slightly above zero.’
Oliver Plunkett, the chief executive of Ocean Infinity, previously said it was his life’s ambition to find the plane.
However, should the plane be found Ocean Infinity will not be able to raise the wreckage without permission from Malaysia.
If it is found the Malaysian government will likely come under huge pressure from foreign governments and relatives of the missing passengers to go ahead with the recovery mission.
