Hanoi, Vietnam – A deep-sea search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 began in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, reviving efforts to solve one of aviation’s biggest mysteries more than a decade after the plane disappeared with 239 people on board.
The Malaysian Ministry of Transport said on Wednesday that the research vessel “Armada 86 05” had arrived at a designated search area with two independent underwater vehicles.
The statement did not reveal the location of the search area. She added that the ship was preparing to search the port of Fremantle in Western Australia.
The government did not specifically mention Ocean Infinity, the company that led a previous search and had long been scheduled to lead the new search. But the vehicle identified by the government by its numbers has been widely identified by marine and aviation websites as belonging to Ocean Infinity.
Earlier in December, the Malaysian government said the Texas-based marine robotics company would begin searching targeted areas of the seafloor under a renewed “no fee” agreement.
Ocean Infinity confirmed that it was resuming the search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 but declined to comment further, citing the “important and sensitive nature” of the operation.
Ocean Infinity had previously searched the seabed in 2018, under a similar contract, but found no trace of the plane. The company said it has since updated its technology and improved its analysis. Its chief executive, Oliver Plunkett, said last year that the company was working with several experts and had narrowed the search area to what it believed was the most likely crash site.
Earlier this year, Ocean Infinity briefly resumed seafloor searches in a new 15,000-square-kilometre (5,800-square-mile) area in the southern Indian Ocean after receiving approval from Malaysia, but efforts were suspended in April due to bad weather.
The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data later showed that the plane deviated from its planned route and headed south toward the remote southern Indian Ocean region, where investigators believe it crashed. There was no explanation for the change of course.
A costly and lengthy multinational search effort failed to locate the plane, although pieces of debris believed to be from the plane later washed up along the coast of East Africa and on Indian Ocean islands. No major wreckage or bodies were ever recovered.
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