Malaysia has agreed to terms and conditions of an agreement to continue the search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, 11 years after the aircraft vanished over the South China Sea.
This agreement with UK based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity enables the start of a seabed search operation to locate the wreckage of MH370, in a new area estimated at 15,000 square kilometres in the southern Indian Ocean
“With the cabinet's approval today, the Ministry of Transport will represent the government in signing the search agreement with Ocean Infinity,” said Loke Siew Fook, Malaysian Minister of Transport.
MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while on a routine service between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
The transport minister also confirmed that the Malaysian government will not be required to pay Ocean Infinity unless the wreckage of the aircraft is found. However, a fee of $70 million will be paid to Ocean Infinity if the wreckage of the missing plane is located.
In December 2024, the Malaysian government agreed “in principle” to resume the search for MH370, accepting the proposal from Ocean Infinity to proceed with seabed search operations.
In 2015, French investigators at the French aeronautical research laboratory near Toulouse formally identified a flaperon that washed-up on a remote island in the Indian Ocean as part of MH370 which disappeared more than a year earlier.
The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed that investigators used maintenance records to match a serial number found on the wing part with the missing aircraft. "Today it is possible to state with certainty that the flaperon discovered on Reunion on July 29, 2015, corresponds to that of Flight MH370," read the prosecutor's statement.
A year later in 2016, a section of an outboard wing flap found on Pemba Island in Tanzania was also confirmed to be part of the missing 777.
Malaysia, Australia and China have all conducted joint searches within a 120,000 square kilometre area of the southern Indian Ocean, based on data of automatic connections between an Inmarsat satellite and the plane.
The Malaysian government said that it is committed to continuing the search operation, providing closure for the families of passengers who were on-board MH370.