The Malaysian government has approved the launch of a new search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared 10 years ago, announced Malaysia's Transport Minister Anthony Loke on Friday.
The case is widely regarded as the greatest mystery in aviation history.
"The proposal for a search operation by Ocean Infinity (a US exploration company) is sound and worth considering," Loke told reporters.
The government is currently negotiating the terms of the search with the American company, which Loke said will only be paid if a discovery is made. The operations will be carried out in a new area of the Indian Ocean estimated at 15,000 km².
On 8 March 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China disappeared from radar screens 40 minutes after take-off – a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Two weeks later, on 24 March 2014, the 239 people on board the plane – the majority of them Chinese nationals – were declared presumed dead by the Malaysian authorities.
However, no bodies have been found.
Underwater searches by the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese governments were suspended in January 2017 after the authorities decided that the wreckage was unlikely to be found within the 120,000 km² search area.
Authenticated parts of the plane have already been found on Reunion Island, Mauritius and Tanzania. Others, more or less certainly from MH370, have been discovered in Mozambique, South Africa and Madagascar.
