Relatives of a passenger on a Malaysia Airlines plane who mysteriously disappeared 10 years ago called for a new search on Sunday, speaking of enduring grief and efforts to find closure.
On March 8, 2014, flight MH370, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 239 people, disappeared from radar screens en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has not been found.
About 500 relatives and supporters gathered at a shopping mall near Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur on Sunday to celebrate Remembrance Day, with many visibly grieving.
They lit 239 candles, one for each passenger missing on the flight.
Some relatives are from China, and nearly two-thirds of the passengers on the crashed plane are from China.
“The past 10 years have been a rollercoaster for me, a non-stop emotional rollercoaster,” Malaysian lawyer Grace Nathan, 36, told AFP. Her mother, Anne Daisy, 56, Anne Daisy) was also on the plane.
She addressed the crowd and called on the Malaysian government to conduct a new search.
“MH370 is not history,” she said.
Liu Shuangfang, 67, from China’s Hebei Province, lost her 28-year-old son Li Yanlin, who was also a passenger on the plane.
“I want justice for my son. Where is the plane?” said Liu, who flew to Malaysia to attend the event.
“The search must continue,” she added.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke told reporters, “As far as Malaysia is concerned, it is committed to finding the aircraft … cost is not an issue.”
He told relatives at the party that he would meet with officials from Texas-based Ocean Unlimited, which had previously conducted a failed search, to discuss a new operation.
“We are now waiting for them to provide a suitable date and I hope to see them soon.”
After months of searching the seafloor without success, Ocean Infinity’s 2018 search came to an end.
Previous Australian-led searches in the Indian Ocean, which covered 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles), found almost no trace of the plane and only picked up some debris.
The operation, considered the largest search operation in aviation history, was suspended in January 2017.
The plane’s disappearance has long been the subject of a range of theories – ranging from the credible to the outlandish – including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah lost control.
The final report on the tragedy, released in 2018, pointed to air traffic control errors and said the plane’s course was changed manually.
Follow us on Google news ,Twitter , and Join Whatsapp Group of thelocalreport.in
