Kuala Lumpur's Transport Minister said that Malaysia Airlines' latest search MH370 has been suspended because it is “not seasonal” more than a decade after the plane went missing.
“They will halt operations for the time being and resume searches at the end of this year,” Transport Minister Anthony Roke said in an audio recording sent to AFP Thursday by his aides.
“Now, it's not the season,” Rourke said on the recording. This took place at an event at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday.
On the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, the Boeing 777 disappeared from the radar screen, carrying 239 people.
Despite the biggest search in aviation history, no planes have been discovered.
Loke's comments follow a failed attempt to cover the vast strip of the Indian Ocean earlier, just over a month after authorities said the search had resumed.
The first Australia-led search covered 120,000 square kilometers (46,300 square miles) in the Indian Ocean over three years, with few traces of the plane being found except for a few fragments.
Ocean Infinity, a UK-based and US-based maritime exploration firm, has agreed to launch a new search this year after a failed hunt in 2018.
“No one can predict whether it will be found or not,” Rourke said, referring to the plane's wreckage.
– Aviation Mystery –
Filming said in December that a new 15,000 square kilometre area of the South Indian Ocean would become infinitely familiar with the ocean.
The latest mission was carried out under the same “No Find, No Fiend” principle as previous searches for Ocean Infinity. The government only paid if the company found the aircraft.
The loss of the plane has long been the subject of theory from credible to exotic, including the cheating of veteran pilot Theharry Ahmad Shah.
The final report of the tragedy, released in 2018, pointed to the failures caused by air traffic control, saying that the airplane course was manually changed.
Investigators said in a 495-page report he still didn't know why the plane had disappeared and refused to rule out someone other than the pilot deflected the jet.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while others came from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and more.
Parents of passengers who lost the flight continue to request responses from Malaysian authorities.
Family members of Chinese passengers gathered in Beijing last month on the 11th anniversary of the loss of flights, outside the government agency and the Malaysian embassy.
Participants at the rally cried out, “Please give us your loved one back!”
Some had placards asking, “When will the 11 years of waiting and pain end?”
RS-TJX/DHC
