KUALA LUMPUR: After mapping vast stretches of the southern Indian Ocean seabed with cutting-edge technology, Ocean Infinity has once again returned empty-handed in its latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The deep-sea exploration company said it was unable to locate the missing Boeing 777 despite deploying its most advanced equipment and revisiting the ocean with updated data.
Its chief executive Oliver Plunkett said the company’s vessel left the search area on Jan 23, marking the end of its latest attempt to find the aircraft, which disappeared while flying from here to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014.
Since first embarking on the MH370 search mission in 2018, Ocean Infinity said it had spent 151 days at sea and mapped more than 140,000 sq km of seabed.
“It was important for us to take advantage of every piece of information and data available and go back, but despite all that effort, we haven’t been able to find it,” Plunkett said on Sunday.
He added that the search’s “scientific rigour, automation techniques, robotics and greater organisational experience” allowed it to be conducted with a level of “precision and speed unimaginable in 2018”.
While the outcome was not what many had hoped, Plunkett said the areas surveyed would help narrow possibilities for any future search.
“If nothing else, we can say with confidence that it isn’t where we looked. That matters – it brings clarity and will help those continuing to study the evidence refine their thinking and shape future search strategies,” he said.
The company also expressed gratitude to the families of those on board, as well as to the Malaysian and Australian governments, and said it remained in discussions with Malaysia about returning to the search area in the future “when circumstances allow”.
The disappearance of MH370, with 239 people on board, remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries. Previous multinational search efforts, led by Australia, ended in 2017 after failing to locate the main wreckage.
