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Vanessa Cai

China has backed a fresh search for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared 11 years ago.
The Boeing 777 aircraft which was bound for Beijing disappeared from the radar screens two hours after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board, including more than 150 Chinese nationals.
Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke said on Tuesday that the deep-sea exploration company Ocean Infinity, which carried out an earlier unsuccessful search in 2018, had resumed the search for the plane.
The revived search will focus on four “hotspots” within a 15,000 sq km (5,800 sq miles) area some 1,500km west of Perth in Western Australia, according to media reports.
Foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday that China “appreciated” the Malaysian government’s commitment to searching for the plane.
“China is willing to continue maintaining close communication and cooperation with Malaysia, actively and properly handling subsequent matters, and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese passengers’ families,” Lin said.
Over the past years Chinese families have been pushing for a search, haunted by the lack of answers, some of them lobbying the foreign ministry to get involved.
As well as Chinese and Malaysian nationals, the passengers also included citizens of Australia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Ukraine, the Netherlands and the United States.
In December, the Malaysian government announced that it had agreed to launch a new search for the flight, saying Ocean Infinity had made a “credible” proposal that “merits further examination”.


Two earlier search operations yielded few clues as to the location of the aircraft in the vast and mostly uncharted southern Indian Ocean, where experts believe the plane ended its journey.
In 2017, a joint search operation by Australia, China and Malaysia, covering 120,000 sq km in the Indian Ocean, was called off with no result. A second attempt by Ocean Infinity in 2018 ended with no progress after 90 days.
Investigators have concluded that the plane’s transponder was manually switched off before it veered off course.


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Malaysia Airlines flight 370

The plane disappeared almost 11 years ago after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. Photo: AFP

Family members of passengers and crew on board missing flight MH370 and Malaysia’s Transport Minister, Loke Siew Fook at an event in Subang Jaya last year marking the 10th anniversary of its disappearance. Photo: EPA-EFE

Crew on board a vessel in the southern Indian Ocean involved in a search in 2018 led by Ocean Infinity for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photo: EPA-EFE

A mural representing the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at an alley near Kuala Lumpur. Photo: AFP

News

China

Diplomacy

Deep-sea exploration company Ocean Infinity has resumed efforts to find out what happened to the flight that disappeared 11 years ago


Deep-sea exploration company Ocean Infinity has resumed efforts to find out what happened to the flight that disappeared 11 years ago.


Malaysia

Malaysia Airlines