[Avionics Magazine 01-17-2017] The most expensive and complex search mission in aviation history has ended, at least for now, and possibly forever. On Jan. 17, 2017, the transport ministers of Australia, China and Malaysia issued a joint statement noting that the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) has been suspended.
A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, flight MH370, went missing from radar in March 2014. Now based on the reported discovery of a flaperon from flight 370, authorities are trying to determine what happened. Photo: Flickr – Creative Commons. By – SA Paul Rowbotham.
According to the statement released by the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) in Australia, the nearly three-year search totaling $160 million has been suspended after the aircraft could not be located in the 120,000 square-kilometre underwater search area in the southern Indian Ocean. Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 people, disappeared from civilian air traffic radar coverage March 8, 2014. Despite making several
breakthroughs in the last two and a half years, the search teams from Australia, China and Malaysia were unable to locate the aircraft.
“The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness. It is consistent with decisions made by our three countries in the July 2016 Ministerial Tripartite meeting in Putrajaya Malaysia. Whilst combined scientific studies have continued to refine areas of probability, to date no new information has been discovered to determine the specific location of the aircraft,” according to the statement released by Australia’s JACC.