The newest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been suspended briefly because of unsuitable seasonal weather, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said on Thursday. The operation will restart later this year.
“They suspended the operation temporarily. They will pick up the search at the end of this year,” Loke said in a voice message to AFP. “It’s not the season right now.”
Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 with 239 on board, vanished in 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, one of the greatest aviation mysteries unsolved. There have been several multi-agency efforts to find the plane, but its wreckage has yet to be found.
A collaborative search conducted by Australia between 2014 and 2017 swept 120,000 square kilometers across the Indian Ocean but brought back a handful of debris fragments. In 2018, US- and UK-based search firm Ocean Infinity mounted an unsuccessful search under a “no find, no fee” contract.
Earlier this year, Ocean Infinity restarted its work on the same contractual terms, with Malaysia only paying the company if the aircraft is discovered. “Whether or not it will be discovered will depend on the search. Nobody can predict the outcome,” Loke said.
The disappearance of MH370 has led to many theories, from speculation surrounding the pilots. A report in 2018 mentioned air traffic control lapses and proposed that the course of the aircraft was manually redirected, though motivations for its disappearance are still unclear.
Family members of the missing passengers gathered mostly from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia are still asking for answers. On the 11th anniversary of the tragedy last month, mourning family members in Beijing protested outside government buildings, carrying placards and chanting, “Give us back our loved ones.”