Ocean Infinity resumes search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
The Boeing 777 was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared from radar about an hour after taking off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing during a relatively routine six-hour flight.
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Deep-sea search specialist Ocean Infinity resumed its search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 nearly a dozen years after it disappeared over the Indian Ocean with 239 passengers and crew aboard. (Photo Credit: Fazry Ismail/EPA)
Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The deep-sea search specialists at Ocean Infinity resumed their search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Tuesday, nearly 12 years after the aircraft vanished and became an aviation mystery.
Experts believe MH370 crashed in the Indian Ocean when it disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014. U.S.-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity is undertaking a search of the ocean's bed over the next 55 days after securing a $70 million contract that pays only if the aircraft is located.
Ocean Infinity plans to use advanced sonar scanning technology, deep-sea drones and underwater vehicles to search a 6,000-square-mile area of the Indian Ocean's bed, NBC News reported.
The firm ended a 22-day search in April due to poor weather and postponed additional efforts until the end of the traditional storm season in the North Indian Ocean, which runs from April through December.
"The search operation will focus on the target area that is considered to have the highest probability of detecting the plane, in line with the service agreement signed between the Kingdom of Malaysia and Ocean Infinity on March 25, 2025," Malaysia's Ministry of Transport said in a March statement.
The Boeing 777 was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared from radar about an hour after taking off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing during a relatively routine six-hour flight.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, along with a significant number of Malaysians and U.S. citizens.
The aircraft's transponder stopped working about 40 minutes into the flight, but military radar still tracked it as it unexpectedly turned to the west, passed over the Malay Peninsula and vanished somewhere over the Indian Ocean.
Dozens of potential items of debris from the aircraft were found along the shores of islands in the Indian Ocean and along the east African coast, but no human remains have been found.
Everyone on board is presumed to be dead, and the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments undertook the costliest and largest undersea search in history from 2014 to 2017 by mapping 46,000 square miles of the southern Indian Ocean's floor.
Ocean Infinity also spent three months searching for the aircraft in 2018 after accepting the contract to do so.
The U.S. firm recently succeeded in finding another elusive target, which had sunk more than a century ago.
Ocean Infinity in 2022 found the Endurance, which was lost when it was trapped and crushed by ice after carrying British explorer Earnest Shackleton and his crew to Antarctica in 1915.
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