Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
More than a decade ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared without a trace, sparking one of the most puzzling mysteries in the aviation world.
Despite a years-long, multinational search, investigators still don’t know what happened to the plane and its 239 passengers and crew.
On Wednesday, the Malaysian government said a ship had begun a new search operation for the missing plane, rekindling hopes that it would eventually be found.
Large-scale searches have been carried out in the southern region before indian oceanThe plane is believed to have crashed, but almost nothing has been found. No bodies or large wreckage were found except for a few small fragments that washed ashore.
Here’s what to know about the fatal aviation tragedy.
flight missing
Boeing 777 disappears from air traffic radar 39 minutes after takeoff Kuala Lumpur Headed to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
“Good night, Malaysian three-seven zero,” the pilot said in his final radio call to Kuala Lumpur, the last communication before the plane entered Vietnamese airspace but failed to register with controllers there.
After a few minutes, the plane’s transponder stopped broadcasting its location. Military radar showed the plane turning back over the Andaman Sea. Satellite data showed it continued flying for several hours, possibly until it ran out of fuel, before crashing into a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean.
Theories about what happened range from hijacking to cabin depressurization or a power failure. There was no evidence of distress calls, ransom demands, technical glitches or severe weather.
In 2018, Malaysian investigators cleared passengers and crew but did not rule out “illegal interference.” Authorities said someone deliberately cut off communications and diverted the plane.
Passengers come from all over the world
MH370 was carrying 12 crew members and 227 passengers, including five young children. Most passengers are Chinese, but there are also citizens of the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia and other countries.
Those on board included two young Iranians with stolen passports, a group of Chinese calligraphy artists, 20 employees of US technology company Freescale Semiconductor, a stuntman for actor Jet Li and several families with young children.
Many families lost multiple members.
Search covers a wide area
The search operation began in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, then expanded to the Andaman Sea and the southern Indian Ocean.
Australia, Malaysia and China coordinated the largest underwater search in history, covering about 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of the seafloor in western Australia. airplaneShips equipped with sonar and robotic submarines scour the oceans for signs of aircraft.
Signals originally believed to be from the plane’s black boxes were later proven to be from other sources, and no wreckage was found. The first confirmed piece of debris, called a flaperon, was found on the remote island of Reunion in July 2015, with more later found off the east coast of Africa.
The search was suspended in January 2017.
In 2018, American Ocean Robotics Company Ocean unlimited The search resumed under a “no discovery, no charge” agreement, focusing on areas identified through debris drift studies. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful.
Search faces huge challenges
One reason such an extensive search failed to turn up clues is that no one knew exactly where to look.
The search in the Indian Ocean, the world’s third-largest ocean, was conducted in a difficult area where searchers encountered rough weather and at an average depth of about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles).
It’s not common for planes to disappear in the deep ocean, but when they do, the wreckage can be difficult to find. According to the Aviation Safety Network, dozens of planes have gone missing over the past 50 years.
The hunt resumes
The Malaysian government in March approved another “no-find, no-fee” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume undersea search operations at a new site covering more than 15,000 square kilometers (5,800 square miles) of water. Ocean Infinity will receive $70 million in compensation only if the wreckage is discovered.
However, the search was suspended in April due to bad weather. The government said on Wednesday that Ocean Infinity will resume searches intermittently for 55 days starting on December 30, targeting areas believed to be most likely to find the missing plane.
It’s unclear whether Oceans Unlimited has new evidence of the plane’s location. The company said it will use new technology and work with a number of experts to analyze the data and narrow the search to the most likely locations.