Malaysia agrees to ‘No find, no Fee hunt’ for the missing MH370

The Malaysian government has given the green light for a new search effort to locate missing flight MH370, a decade after the aircraft mysteriously disappeared.

The government confirmed it has accepted a “no find, no fee” offer from a US-based company to resume the search for the missing flight.

The plane is thought to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean more than ten years ago.

Malaysia’s Transport Minister, Anthony Loke, announced that cabinet ministers approved a new phase of the MH370 search during a meeting last week. The search will be led by Texas-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity, which will focus on a new 15,000-square-kilometre (5,800-square-mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean.

“The proposed new search area, identified by Ocean Infinity, is based on the latest data and analysis from experts and researchers,” Loke said in a statement. “The company’s proposal is credible.”

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777, disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014, shortly after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people onboard, most of them Chinese nationals. Satellite data indicated that the plane veered off its flight path and continued flying towards the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

A costly multinational search effort failed to locate the wreckage, although some debris from the plane has washed up on the east African coast and islands in the Indian Ocean.

In 2018, a private search conducted by Ocean Infinity also yielded no results.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke confirmed that under the “no find, no fee” arrangement, the Malaysian government will not pay Ocean Infinity unless the wreckage of the plane is located. He added that his ministry aims to finalize negotiations with the company regarding the terms and conditions of the agreement in early 2025.

“This decision reflects the government’s ongoing commitment to continuing the search and providing closure to the families of the MH370 passengers,” Loke said.

Ocean Infinity’s CEO, Oliver Plunkett, stated earlier this year that the company has upgraded its technology since the 2018 search. He mentioned that the firm is collaborating with numerous experts to analyze data and refine the search area, focusing on the most likely location for the wreckage.

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