Ocean Infinity Proposes New Search For Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

MH370 was a scheduled flight between Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur, and its Chinese counterpart, Beijing. The flight time was supposed to be just shy of 6 hours. On January 17, 2017, after almost three years of efforts, the governmental search was suspended “citing the absence of credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft.”. Between 2017 and 2018, Ocean Infinity attempted unsuccessfully to locate the wreck. Today, it was announced that a new search proposal led by Ocean Infinity had been submitted to the Malay government.

A new hope?

It has been revealed that on May 3, Texas-based Ocean Infinity proposed a new search for MH370 to the Malay government.

According to the New Strait Times, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke has disclosed that the company has submitted a proposal paper along with evidence and information for examination by the relevant parties under his ministry. As per the discussions held on Thursday, the matter would need to be presented to the Cabinet before an agreement between the government and Ocean Infinity is finalized. He anticipates that the process will take about three months to complete. He said the following.

If all goes well, they have expressed their readiness to start the search mission in November. However, we need cabinet approval because I can’t preempt the Cabinet.

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Timeline of the events

On March 8, 2014, it was operated by a Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER registered 9M-MRO. According to CNN, the airplane took off at 00:40 local time, with the flight going on as usual until 01:21 AM, when the transponder went off.

At 01:30, it was reported that Malaysian air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane over the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and Vietnam. MH370 disappeared from Malaysian military radar at 02:22.

The search began two days later, focusing initially on the area around both of the Asian countries. As new satellite data was found, the search then concentrated on a vast plot of seabed near Southwestern Australia. A search effort was led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the Australian counterpart to the US’s NTSB.

Unfortunately, despite the extensive search and rescue efforts that followed,9M-MRO and its occupants are still yet to be found. Since then, various pieces of debris have been found in locations on the Indian Ocean. For example, 2015 and 2016 saw aircraft flaps wash up on beaches in Réunion Island, Tanzania, and Mauritius. All of these were later declared to be genuine parts from 9M-MRO.

In October 2020, further wreckage washed up on Australian shores, reigniting discourses surrounding the disappearance. However, this debris was deemed unlikely to have come from MH370.

In July 2023, debris that is likely to be from the doomed flight was confirmed. Blaine Gibson, a wreck hunter searching in Madagascar, first spotted the debris in 2019. Similar debris was also found at the exact location on June 12, 2016, which was confirmed to be the starboard side nose wheel forward door from 9M-MRO.

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