The search for Malaysia Airlines' MH370 plane has begun in the Indian Ocean, the Straits Times reported on February 25. This could be the last effort to search for the plane that went missing 11 years ago.
The Armada 7806 deepwater searcher ship of the US-based private maritime exploration company - Ocean Infinity arrived at a new search area about 1,500km from the coast of Perth, Australia last weekend, US and UK media reported on February 25.
The Telegraph reported that the autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were deployed from the Armada 7806 within hours of the ship reaching the waters off Perth and had begun sweeping the ocean floor.
The Armada will search the 15,000km2 area for six weeks, with "special attention paid to four hot spots," where some MH370 researchers believe the wreckage of the Boeing 777 could be found, Australia's 9News news agency said.
This search for MH370 is expected to be complicated due to the terrain of the ocean floor as well as the weather. According to 9News, the four hot spots that Ocean Infinity's Armada search ship focused on searching were quite complex due to the bottom terrain of the ocean, several kilometers below the surface, which is home to underground cliffs and volcanoes. High waves are occurring in this area due to Bianca off the coast of Western Australia.
In December 2024, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said that Ocean Infinity had been tasked with continuing the search for MH370. The search contract is based on the principle of "no find, no fee". If the body of MH370 is found, Ocean Infinity will demand a fee of $70 million, similar to the proposed fee in 2018.
On March 8, 2014, flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, and went missing.
After the plane went missing, Malaysia, China and Australia launched a joint search in a 120,000 square kilometre area in the southern Indian Ocean. However, this first search ended in January 2017 after no significant results.
The second search for MH370, also the first by Ocean Infinity, began in January 2018 in a 25,000km2 area in the southern Indian Ocean and ended in June 2018 without results.
