The aircraft disappeared 11 years ago with 239 people onboard (Image: Getty)
A British company has launched what could be the final attempt to recover Malaysian Airlines flight , which mysteriously vanished over the Indian Ocean 11 years ago.
Marine robots company Ocean Infinity sent a high-tech deep-water support vessel around 1,200 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia, at the weekend in a last-ditch bid to solve one of aviation’s .
MH370 vanished from flight radars on March 8, 2014, while en-route between Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and the Chinese capital of Beijing. Investigators believe the flight crashed somewhere in the south Indian Ocean, presumably killing the 239 people onboard.
Ocean Infinity’s Armada 7806 ship is expected to spend six weeks scouring three or four areas of the ocean floor where data has suggested the jet’s remains could be found.
It has deployed autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), capable of descending 6km underwater, and is believed to have already begun detailed scans of the seabed.
The AUVs can remain submerged for up to four days – twice the length of their counterparts in previous recovery attempts – and are armed with 32-imagers, lasers, cameras and sonar.
: [REPORT]
A search for MH370 was quickly launched in the hours following the disappearance of the flight (Image: Getty)
Alongside remote vehicles, ready to be used to recover the wreckage if it is found, the AUVs are being controlled via satellite link from Ocean Infinity’s base in Southampton.
The mission could mark the last attempt to find the remants of the lost flight, and was originally devised in coordination with the Malaysian Government, who proposed a “no find, no fee” deal with the UK company, with a potential payout of £55million ($70million) on the table for a successful effort.
However, the agreement ultimately fell through, and Ocean Infinity launched its own search effort in a bid to find the aircraft before the Southern Hemisphere’s winter sets in.
The company were unsuccessful in a previous attempt to find the planewreck in 2018, but chief executive Oliver Plunkett told the families of those lost in the apparent crash that it was his life’s ambition to recover its wreckage. Malaysian authorities have also failed in two attempts to find the elusive jet.
Don’t miss… [REPORT] [REPORT] [REPORT]
Several search operations have previously been launched in the hope of finding MH370 (Image: LEUT Kelli Lunt/Australia Department of Defence via Getty Images)
The Boeing 777, which was scheduled to travel northwards towards Bejing, turned back before reaching Vietnam and veered southwest towards the Malay peninsula before going off-radar.
The zones being scoured by Ocean Infinity’s vessel, which spans around 15,000 square-kilometres, include those thought to have been given insufficient attention during previous search efforts.
They also include a spot further south in the ocean, where MH370 could have veered an extra 100 nautical miles than originally estimated after running out of fuel and a zone where it could have gone down based on interference with ham radio transmissions.
Retired NASA aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey told that the likelihood of the operation being a success was “about 50-50”.
He said: “People think the seabed is smooth but really it’s a horrible place. It’s covered in canyons and cliffs, seamounts and volcanoes, pitch black with huge pressure and temperatures only slightly above zero.”
The search area is markedly smaller than that scanned during previous attempts, which averaged 120,000 square-kilometres, lending hope to the idea that the decade-long mystery could finally be solved.
If the wreckage is found, Ocean Infinity would need the Malaysian Government’s go-ahead to raise it from the seabed.