More than 200 people died when Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 crashed after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, and it has become one of aviation’s greatest mysteries
A British marine robotics company has launched what is likely be the final search for the doomed Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
The missing aircraft is one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, having vanished 11 years ago after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. Ocean Infinity has now started to scour the seabed in an attempt to find the wreckage.
The deep-water support vessel Armada 7806 arrived at a new search zone in the Indian Ocean 1,200 miles off Perth, Australia, over the weekend, marine tracking websites show.
Autonomous underwater vehicles were deployed from the ship within hours of its arrival at the site and have begun scanning the ocean floor, it is believed. The vessels – and the remote vehicles that would help recover the wreckage were it to be found – are operated via a satellite link from Ocean Infinity’s Southampton base.
And the deployment may offer the last chance of finding the remains of the lost Boeing 777, which vanished in March 2014 with 239 people on board.
Hope remains the mystery will be solved. In recent years, a British tech expert told The Mirror he believed he saw the plane on Google Maps. Ian Wilson said “the greenest, darkest part” on Google Maps is the wreck of the aircraft.
And Robert Morton, a father of three from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, also told us he came across the picture of the aircraft “by chance” on Google Maps too. Images he shared with us appeared to depict the aircraft underwater less than 0.7 miles off the Scottish coast – but experts said these pictures could just be a “glitch”.
Ocean Infinity is also determined to shed light on the mystery. It previously told relatives of those lost that it was his life’s ambition to find the jet. The company halted an earlier bid in 2018 without success.
Now, it is understood the Southampton-based firm is on a “no find, no fee” which could see Ocean Infinity receive $70million (£55million) if the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is discovered. Like previous efforts, the search is focused on an arc of the southern Indian Ocean along which the jet is thought to have come down, based on the regular signals between the aircraft and an Inmarsat communications satellite.
In March 2014, MH370 was due to have flown north to Beijing but turned back before reaching Vietnam and veered south-west across the Malay peninsula towards the Indian Ocean before it left radar range.
