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3 Members of The Nelons Family Gospel Group Dies in Plane Crash
The search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 will continue more than a decade after the plane went missing.
Malaysia's Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced Dec. 20 that the country's government has agreed in principle to carry on the search for wreckage of the flight, which vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
"Our responsibility and obligation and commitment is to the next of kin," Loke said in a press conference, CNN reported. "We hope this time will be positive, that the wreckage will be found and give closure to the families."
The search—which fill focus on a new area of the southern Indian Ocean—will be conducted by Texas-based marine exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which oversaw the most recent search for the plane's remains back in 2018.
The transport minister explained that the Malaysian government and the firm are still finalizing their agreement, which is a "no find, no fee" deal, meaning that the firm will receive $70 million only if it discovers substantive wreckage.
The announcement comes nine months after officials indicated that they were open to resuming the search after Ocean Infinity approached them.
"The Malaysian Government's position is consistent," they said in a statement to ABC News in March. "We will commission a further search operation when new information and credible evidence is ascertained."
Richard Humphries/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The company's CEO Oliver Plunkett provided insight into his company's desire to continue searching the ocean for debris six years after the search became dormant.
"Finding MH370 and bringing some resolution for all connected with the loss of the aircraft has been a constant in our minds since we left the southern Indian Ocean in 2018," he explained at the time. "Since then, we have focused on driving the transformation of operations at sea; innovating with technology and robotics to further advance our ocean search capabilities."
"This search is arguably the most challenging, and indeed pertinent one out there," Plunkett continued. "We’ve been working with many experts, some outside of Ocean Infinity, to continue analysing the data in the hope of narrowing the search area down to one in which success becomes potentially achievable."
According to CNN, some debris "confirmed and believed" to be from the missing plane has washed up on the coasts of Africa as well as islands in the Indian Ocean.
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