Dec. 30 (UPI) — Deep-sea search specialists at Ocean Infinity resumed their search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Tuesday, nearly 12 years after the plane disappeared and became an aviation mystery.
Experts believe MH370 crashed in the Indian Ocean when it disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014. US-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity is conducting a search of the ocean floor over the next 55 days after winning a $70 million contract that will only pay if the plane is located.
Ocean Infinity plans to use advanced sonar scanning technology, deep-sea drones and underwater vehicles to search a 6,000-square-mile area of the Indian Ocean bed, NBC News reported.
The firm ended a 22-day search in April due to bad weather and postponed additional efforts until the end of the traditional storm season in the northern Indian Ocean, which runs from April to December.
“The search operation will focus on the target area that is considered to have the highest probability of detecting the aircraft, in line with the service agreement signed between the Kingdom of Malaysia and Ocean Infinity on March 25, 2025,” Malaysia’s Ministry of Transport said in a March statement.
The Boeing 777 was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared from radar about an hour after taking off from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing during a relatively routine six-hour flight.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, along with a significant number of Malaysians and American citizens.
The aircraft’s transponder stopped working about 40 minutes into the flight, but military radar still tracked it as it unexpectedly turned west, passed over the Malay Peninsula and ended up somewhere over the Indian Ocean.
Dozens of items of potential debris from the plane have been found along the shores of islands in the Indian Ocean and off the east coast of Africa, but no human remains have been found.
Everyone on board is presumed dead, and the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments conducted the most expensive and largest underwater search in history from 2014 to 2017, mapping 46,000 square miles of the southern Indian Ocean landmass.
Ocean Infinity also spent three months searching for the aircraft in 2018 after accepting the contract to do so.
The American firm recently managed to find another elusive target, which was sunk more than a century ago.
Ocean Infinity in 2022 found the Endurance, which was lost when it was trapped and crushed by ice after carrying British explorer Earnest Shackleton and his crew to Antarctica in 1915.