In this photo taken March 3, 2018, a girl has her face painted during the Day of Remembrance for MH370 event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (AP Photo)
The four-year underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing over the Indian Ocean, ended on Tuesday. In January this year, Malaysia had inked a “no cure, no fee” deal with Houston, Texas-based Ocean Infinity to resume the hunt for the plane, a year after the official search in the southern Indian Ocean by the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China was called off.
Ocean Infinity started the search on January 22 and had 90 search days to look for the plane. Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said the 90-day term will spread over a few months because the search vessel has to refuel in Australia and bad weather could be a factor.
The official search was extremely difficult because no transmissions were received from the aircraft after its first 38 minutes of flight. Systems designed to automatically transmit the flight’s position failed to work after this point, according to a final report issued in January 2017 by the Australian Transport Safety Board.
Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, becoming one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.